Why do we have advanced digital solutions for Cash, Music, Movies and Communications, while the important Documents needed for a new Job, a Bank Account or to married the one you love, are still fragile pieces of paper?
Despite our world becoming more and more digitized, there’s one area that’s been helplessly left behind: official Documents. Today we use the internet to make phone calls, pay our bills, listen to music, and watch video; and with the emergence of Web3, we consume digital art in the form of NFT’s, and we buy them with money absent of centralized ownership. Digital innovations move faster each year.
Despite this, the every-day essential documents we need to get a Bank Account, to apply to a School or an important Job – or even to marry the person we love, are still stored in places where they can be lost, destroyed, or simply forgotten; places like dusty file-cabinets on a shelf in your basement, or buried among old boxes at your parents house.
And, it’s not only a vulnerability issue with these documents, but they are also incredibly easy to falsify. This goes for printed paper as well as pdf’s. Almost anyone can forge a signature or change details on a document using photoshop, and the forgery takes minutes to perfect. It’s evident that the modern world requires new solutions.
Adobe came up with the pdf in the year 1993. It has served a great purpose but is now old technology. In the 30 plus years since its inception – what, if anything has really happened with documents?
If you would have asked anyone 10 years go if they thought we would still store vital documents containing our entire lives in a binder on a shelf, in the year 2020, very few would have said ’Yes’. But, here we are in 2022 and this is still common practice. Well, things are finally starting to change; Web3 companies have packaged smart technology with innovative blockchain solutions, to make official documents truly digital –and as such: always available and impossible to fake, loose or destroy.
For the organizations issuing documents, as well as the Recipients of them, this stride forward means that once a document is delivered via email – and accepted – it never has to be re-created and sent again.
It also means that each document always can be verified as authentic – by anyone, anywhere. Digitized documents are instantly available, as long as you have an internet connection. And, even if you don’t, a secure copy can be downloaded and carried with you in a phone or computer, or printed on paper, and the difference with these new, secure copy’s of the digital originals, are that as soon as you get an Internet connection again, these copies can be verified as authentic.
Web3 is the answer
All organizations issuing digital documents with TRUE original get the following main advantages over paper and pdf’s:
1. They create trust by offering documents that cannot be falsified. All meta-data is stored in blockchain which allows them to be easily verifiable.
2. The new digital documents generate relevant traffic and statistics, since documents can be published on the Issuer’s webpage.
Every time a recipient shares and shows a document, they channel traffic to the Issuer, creating both a new source of super relevant traffic, as well as business intelligence. For example, Academia can for the first time see when, how and where a Diploma is viewed, and an Issuing Authority can see how often a Certificate is used and when it’s verified. What this business intel will do for educators, companies and authorities is too early to say, but it is already clear that the benefits will be dramatic.
3. Issuing Organisations save time. Because truly digital documents are generated by computers, in code, the process of creating and distributing them can be made automatic – for example triggered by an event in a database, or by a person clicking a button. This in turn saves a ton of time and effort from people previously doing a monotone and boring job. Plus, it will also minimize human errors. As we all know, computers tend to make fewer mistakes than people.
In summary, TRUE original documents help both Issuers and Recipients take a step into the future. Imagine no forgeries, no lost or stolen originals, and no wasted time. All of our important documents always available when we need them. And lastly, we’ll clear some space in your parents dusty basement.
