WISeKey's Blockchain-Based Solutions Offer Decentralized Trust to Unlock a Decentralized Internet 3.0 via the Trust Protocol Alliance

WISeKey’s Blockchain-Based Solutions Offer Decentralized Trust to Unlock a Decentralized Internet 3.0 via the Trust Protocol Alliance

(for more information visit https://trustprotocolassociation.org/)

Geneva, Zug, Switzerland – October 11, 2021 - WISeKey International Holding Ltd ("WISeKey", SIX: WIHN), a leading cybersecurity, IoT and AI company, today announced that Trust Protocol Association (the Association) is now fully operational. The purpose of the Association is to establish a new Trust Protocol for the Internet by combining traditional Cryptographic Trust Models with permissioned Blockchain transactions through strong authentication provided by the OISTE WISeKey Root of Trust, and create a new Global Trust platform and an ecosystem of governmental, technology and business partners, each representing a certification node with the possibility of having multiple certifications nodes per country. Click this link to learn more about founding members, services offered, and recent and upcoming events of the Association.

The Association promotes the use of Blockchain technologies internationally, facilitates the rapid adaptation and on-boarding of Blockchain-based solutions, and fosters stronger collaboration between the public, private and academic sectors. If we study the way the internet has developed with Internet 2.0, we will find massive data structures that are built behind proprietary enclosures controlled by few companies with many of them having unprecedented trust issues: the global search index at Google, the global product index at Amazon, the global social graph at Facebook, etc. The problem was that in those early years, these companies had no distributed identity and trust management system to match the new distributed communications architecture. Thirty years later, with the Blockchain, we finally have the conceptual framework for a decentralized system, one in which trust need no longer be invested in a third-party intermediary but managed in a distributed manner across a community of users incentivized to protect a public good, by bringing these large data structures created by the public under the user consent, totally decentralized and interoperable.

WISeKey’s blockchain-based solutions aim to override the need for a central authority by distributing information previously held in a centralized repository across a network of participating nodes. While Blockchain is not owned by one individual or organization, anyone with an internet connection (and access, in the case of private blockchains) can make use of it, help maintain and verify it. When a transaction is made on a blockchain, it is added to a group of transactions, known as “blocks.” Each block of transactions is added to the database in a chronological, immutable chain. Each block is stamped with a unique cryptographic code, which ensures that records are not counterfeited or changed. The blockchain approach lacks legal validity in most jurisdictions, which only recognize the digital signatures as equally valid that manuscript signatures when generated using traditional PKI technology.

As a clear example of this decentralization process WISeKey has developed a unique NFT Platform following a multichain strategy through a partnership with Polygon, CasperLabs and Ocean Protocol. WISe.Art is a fully fledged marketplace with its own digital currency, has the ability to include curators and multipliers, while-labeling options and special NFT designs.

The NFT design of the WISe.Art platform ensures that besides an authenticated and signed version of the actual digital asset, it creates an irreversible link to the physical object, provides proof of ownership, provenance and a set of contracts describing future use and monetization streams. The NFT platform is secured by WISeKey's various security technologies enabling the authentication of physical objects as well as digital assets, in a safe end-to-end process. The WISe.Art platform allows trading of NFTs into WISeKey's own TrustECoin cryptocurrency, enabling market participants to stay anonymous - if they so choose - while ensuring the necessary KYC processes to avoid unwanted activity on the marketplace.

A user-controlled digital identity typically starts with a number, unique to an individual, that is associated with a public key for which the user has the private key issued by the OISTE/WISeKey Crypto Graphic Root Key. The WISeID Network is a most deployed standard for digital identity operating since 1998 by a non-profit organization – OISTE.ORG – designed to bring the neutrality, trust, consent, personal control, and ease-of-use of Digital IDs to the Internet.

A Root of Trust is a source that can always be trusted within a cryptographic system. A principal example is a Trusted Certification Authority (CA) which generates digital certificates that can be used for legally binding signed electronic transactions. The traditional PKI does not fit well with the heterogeneous blockchain distributed trust model that leverages the existing trust domains and bridges them to create end-to-end trust between them without relying on any common RoT.

WISeID Trusted Distributed Ledger Technology of Identity used to store the identity of objects and peoples and offers connected objects the ability to identify, authenticate and verify each other with a digital certificate. During each interaction, the Blockchain of Identity verifies and validates each digital certificate to secure the interaction Connected objects secured with WISeKey’s IoT chips produce a huge amount of Big Data that, when analyzed with AI, can help industrial applications to predict the failure of their equipment before it happens. The WISeKey platform allows the IoT device equipped with these chips to send authenticated data to the cloud using a dual factor authentication at the device level. Imagine a smartcard sending authenticated data of each component of the car to predict when these parts will require maintenance and to digitally sign all the logs required to prove that service was provided. This platform, which can be used in different industrial applications allows optimized productivity across industries through predictive maintenance on equipment and machinery, creates truly smart homes with connected appliances and provides critical communication between devices including self-driving cars and smart homes. The possibilities that IoT brings to the table are endless.

About WISeKey

WISeKey (NASDAQ: WKEY; SIX Swiss Exchange: WIHN) is a leading global cybersecurity company currently deploying large scale digital identity ecosystems for people and objects using Blockchain, AI and IoT respecting the Human as the Fulcrum of the Internet. WISeKey microprocessors secure the pervasive computing shaping today's Internet of Everything. WISeKey IoT has an install base of over 1.6 billion microchips in virtually all IoT sectors (connected cars, smart cities, drones, agricultural sensors, anti-counterfeiting, smart lighting, servers, computers, mobile phones, crypto tokens etc.). WISeKey is uniquely positioned to be at the edge of IoT as our semiconductors produce a huge amount of Big Data that, when analyzed with Artificial Intelligence (AI), can help industrial applications to predict the failure of their equipment before it happens.

Our technology is Trusted by the OISTE/WISeKey's Swiss based cryptographic Root of Trust ("RoT") provides secure authentication and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, for the Internet of Things, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. The WISeKey RoT serves as a common trust anchor to ensure the integrity of online transactions among objects and between objects and people. For more information, visit www.wisekey.com.

About the Trust protocol Association
The purpose of the Trust Protocol Association (the Association) is to establish a new Trust Protocol for the Internet by combining traditional Cryptographic Trust Models with permissioned Blockchain transactions through strong authentication provided by the OISTE WISeKey Root of Trust, and create a new Global Trust platform and an ecosystem of governmental, technology and business partners, each representing a certification node with the possibility of having multiple certifications nodes per country. The Association promotes the use of Blockchain technologies internationally, facilitate the rapid adaptation and on-boarding of Blockchain-based solutions, foster stronger collaboration between the public, private and academic sectors.

https://trustprotocolassociation.org/

About OISTE FOUNDATION

Founded in Switzerland in 1998, OISTE was created with the objectives of promoting the use and adoption of international standards to secure electronic transactions, expand the use of digital certification and ensure the interoperability of certification authorities’ e-transaction systems.
The OISTE Foundation is a not for profit organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, regulated by article 80 et seq. of the Swiss Civil Code. OISTE is an organization in special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) and belongs to the Not-for-Profit constituency (NPOC) of the ICANN. http://www.oiste.org/.

Mission: transfer the control and management of technologies dealing with digital identities to neutral authorities working for the public interest.

Vision: an Internet where users engage in online transactions and communications under systems of digital identity management that offer robust protection against fraud and theft, while protecting the fundamental right to privacy.

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Disclaimer:
This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning WISeKey International Holding Ltd and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of WISeKey International Holding Ltd to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. WISeKey International Holding Ltd is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities, and it does not constitute an offering prospectus within the meaning of article 652a or article 1156 of the Swiss Code of Obligations or a listing prospectus within the meaning of the listing rules of the SIX Swiss Exchange. Investors must rely on their own evaluation of WISeKey and its securities, including the merits and risks involved. Nothing contained herein is, or shall be relied on as, a promise or representation as to the future performance of WISeKey.