24 April 2020: Blockpass has formed an alliance with Liquidstar, “the Uber for Electricity”, to provide digital identity solutions for off-grid energy provision in developing countries, with initial focus on COVID-19 relief in Nigeria and other pilots in Africa.
Liquidstar has developed a Decentralized Autonomous Utility (DAU) management system utilizing Waypoints, container-housed charging stations, that deploy smart batteries for off-grid electricity provision. From the source-agnostic Waypoints, service providers branded as ‘Power Rangers’ manage the rental and deployment of blockchain-enabled batteries to shared mobility and delivery services, homes and offices. Power Rangers are local businesses or entrepreneurs who recharge, deliver and pick up batteries, as well as handle payment administration.
Blockpass’ digital identity SaaS, KYC ConnectTM, is a core element of Liquidstar’s DAU management stack, providing digital identity profiles for members of the DAU ecosystem. The partnership in the energy sector is a testament to Blockpass’ ability to provide KYC, AML and digital identity solutions to a range of businesses and organizations that need digital verification of trust in an increasingly remote world of COVID-19. Through the Blockpass identity app, end-users have control of their identity, easily create a verified portable identity and reuse it to onboard with any service instantly.
“Blockpass plays a critical role in Liquidstar, enabling the first physical world implementation of end to end Human+Company+Device identity to power Liquidstar’s Decentralized Autonomous Utility platform, ” noted Conor Colwell, Co-Founder of Liquidstar.
Blockpass CEO and Co-Founder Adam Vaziri added, “We are excited about being involved in enabling Liquidstar’s decentralized utility management platform to verify the identities of off-grid ecosystem participants. In an increasingly remote world, there is a strong need to establish trust via reusable and verifiable digital identity.’
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Blockpass and Liquidstar are working with Vista Advisory Partners, Feed the Streets Lagos, Afara Group, Ample and GCIF to provide masks, food, water, and sustainably generated power to those who need it the most. Funds, which can be donated via a project GoFundMe page, will also go towards inventory management, transportation of those goods, proper protection for those delivering the goods, and platform costs.
Liquidstar also starts a funding round April 25th through equity crowdfunding platform Birchal, and is accepting expressions of interests on its fundraising page.
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About Liquidstar: Liquidstar offers a new category of energy distribution, utilizing Waypoint charge stations to deploy smart batteries for beyond-the-grid electrical power distribution. Liquidstar’s vision is to leapfrog off-grid markets to the ‘wireless’ battery powered sustainable ecosystems of the future – solving energy access challenges for the powerless 1.1 billion and providing electricity for essential services during grid destroying disasters. The core Liquidstar software platform strings together various innovation layers provided by expert partners to manage the delivery of source-agnostic electricity through Power Ranger operators. Liquidstar has active pilots in Nigeria and Benin, with Indonesia, Australia, Lebanon, and others in development.
About Blockpass: Blockpass is a unique, reusable digital identity (DID) solution for any organizations that participate in regulated industries and in the increasingly remote business environment where trust needs to be verified digitally. Blockpass offers an alternative process to cumbersome, repetitive and expensive Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks through a seamless merchant dashboard that is setup immediately with pay-as-you-go and no initial fee. Blockpass’ KYC ConnectTM platform enables businesses to select requirements for customer onboarding that can include ID authentication, face-matching, address checking, AML ongoing monitoring and/or screening of sanctions lists, politically exposed persons (PEP), and adverse media. Through Blockpass, end-users easily create a verified portable identity that they can control and re-use to onboard with any service instantly.
