(Olympia, Washington) Jan 12. ArcBlock and members of the Cascadia Blockchain Council testified today in supporting of two WA Blockchain Bills:

• SB 5534 Verifiable credentials
• SB 5544 Blockchain work group

ArcBlock's founder and CEO testified in a public hearing on Wednesday, January 12. The SB 5534 bill examines opportunities for use of verifiable credentials in state government agencies, and also calls for the creation of a Trust Framework for Verifiable Credentials.

Here is the full transcripts of ArcBlock's testify:

Thank you Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

For the record, my name is Zhihong Mao and I am the founder and CEO of ArcBlock Inc. We are a software technology startup company in Seattle that is dedicated to blockchain, a decentralized identity developer platform. I am a software engineer and researcher with over 20 years experience and author of two blockchain books.

I am here today to testify in support of SB 5534.

Over 90% of today’s enterprise blockchain use cases are actually related to verifiable credentials and decentralized identity.

My company uses verifiable credentials for the new zero-trust user authentication with their decentralized identity. Our developer framework enables developers to build various applications based on DID and Verifiable Credentials, such as digital certificates, Non-fungible tokens and more. SB 5534 Verifiable Credentials Bill:

Establishing a trust framework for use of verifiable credentials in Washington state will lay the groundwork for use of this technology in the state in the future

This bill will promote the real use cases for verifiable credentials, reduce the use of paper printed credentials, improve the verification efficiency, and it could make a positive impact for business, environment and technology development.

This bill will help companies like mine because it will promote the industry standard and improve the interoperability between different solutions and different parties in the market.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I am happy to answer any questions.