Verifiable AI, save the world with cheqd

Artificial Intelligence is no longer just a tool; it’s redefining industries, creating new opportunities, and reshaping human interaction. From personalised assistants to content creation, AI has become a powerful enabler of progress. But with great power comes an unsettling consequence: distrust. We’re entering an era where the boundary between real and synthetic blurs. In Hong Kong, a UK engineering firm fell victim to a £20 million scam through an AI-generated deepfake video call. Meanwhile, in France, a woman was conned out of €830,000 by criminals impersonating actor Brad Pitt using advanced AI technology. These aren’t fictional horror stories — they’re real world examples of how AI can be exploited to deceive and manipulate, threatening trust at its very core. As AI’s capabilities grow, so does the urgency to address these challenges. The pressing question isn’t can we build advanced AI systems? But rather how can we ensure they are trustworthy, transparent, and ethical? Rebuilding Trust in the AI-Driven World The solution lies in verifiable, secure, and ethical AI systems. This is where the AI TruthRise Hackathon comes in — a collaborative space for builders, creators, and visionaries to design a future where trust and AI coexist. Imagine a world where: AI agents act transparently and ethically, ensuring they represent the true interests of users. Content credentials authenticate AI-generated images, videos, and text, safeguarding against deepfakes and disinformation. Verified datasets ensure AI is built on ethical, accurate, and unbiased information. At cheqd, we are committed to leading this transformation. By empowering innovators with the tools to create verifiable AI solutions, we’re setting the stage for trust-first AI ecosystems. The AI TruthRise Hackathon is a rallying call to restore trust in AI and shape the future of a more secure, transparent, and ethical AI landscape. Join us as we build solutions that don’t just imagine a better future — they create it. Let’s rise to the challenge, together. All major announcements or communications will be via a discord channel here. During the hackathon, participants will tackle challenges that align with three key pillars: Agentic economy / AI Agents, e.g. Other: The following are requirements for submissions to this hackathon: Multiple Submissions Disclosure: Technical Excellence (40 points) Innovation & Impact (30 points) Business Viability (15 points) Presentation Quality (10 points) Bonus Points (5 points) Details: Incorporate verified private user data, sourced directly from the user via Verida AI, into your solution. This may include gmail, youtube, telegram, spotify, Verida AI inference and any other user owned data. Focus on: Requirements: Verida AI Build Personal AI Agents with Private Data Access. Create and deploy personalized AI agents with secure data connectors, custom knowledge bases, and configurable inference endpoints. All major announcements or communications will be via a discord channel here. Docs Tutorials Other resources Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs): cheqd uses DIDs to identify companies and their associated public keys on its blockchain. Through these identifiers, companies can sign digital documents known as Verifiable Credentials, that can be issued to individuals or organisations to attest a particular attribute or set of attributes. Verifiable Credentials: Using cheqd’s APIs or SDKs, builders can issue Verifiable Credentials to digital identity wallets, cryptographically signed by the DIDs on cheqd’s blockchain network. These can be used for providing individuals or organisations with a reusable, portable and verifiable way of presenting facts or attributes about themselves to third parties, without reliance on a centralized intermediary. DID-Linked Resources (DLRs): Using DLRs, builders can append any file to a DID. This can be used for various purposes, such as storing metadata to a companies’ identifier, or information pertaining to a set of issued credentials, e.g., status lists, trust registries, schemas, company logo, governance documents. Payment-Gated Resources: Builders can create flows where in order to access a DLR, a payment needs to be made to the controller of the DLR $CHEQ account. This creates the opportunity for customisable commercial models alongside the flow of Verifiable Credentials, for example, to incentivise issuance of VCs, an issuer may charge for access to a particular subset of verification data, such as a status list. $CHEQ token: All identity transactions on the cheqd blockchain network incur a $CHEQ transaction fee, including the writing of DIDs and DLRs. Recently, cheqd has introduced the concept of fee abstraction, meaning that any transaction can also be made in an IBC denomination, such as USDC on cheqd. All of cheqd’s identity functionality is available via either: cheqd empowers developers to build scalable, trustworthy and privacy-first identity and AI solutionsI. As experts in trust, cheqd provides a blockchain network tailored for creating Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs), integrating credential payments, and managing Trust Registries. These tools are critical for ensuring the trustworthiness of AI systems by enabling transparency and verifiability. Already, cheqd has forged key partnerships with more than 70% of the SSI application vendor market to date, with numerous AI clients onboarded leveraging cheqd to build trusted solutions. Developers can access SDKs, APIs, and open source resources to streamline development across all major VC formats (JWT-VC, JSON-LD, AnonCreds). With cheqd, you can monetise credential issuance and sharing while maintaining privacy. From zero knowledge proofs to eIDAS 2.0 compliance, cheqd supports global standards and innovation in trusted data markets. Whether you're developing AI or other solutions that put users at the centre, cheqd offers the infrastructure and tools to launch commercially sustainable, privacy-preserving applications. SPRITE+ brings together people involved in research, practice, and policy with a focus on digital contexts. We are a 'one stop shop' for engagement between academic and non-academic communities - a way for these communities to connect and a platform for building collaborations across the spectrum of issues relating to security, privacy, identity and trust. We are funded until 31 August 2027 under the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) Digital Security and Resilience Theme (grant reference EP/W020408/1) SPRITE+ is led by a consortium of five universities: University of Manchester (lead institution), Imperial College London, Lancaster University, Queen’s University Belfast, and University of Southampton. Our Management Team is supported by a multi-disciplinary group of more than 190 Expert Fellows and 24 Project Partners from different sectors, including industry, government, law enforcement, and civil society. Verida, based in Australia, provides a mobile wallet used by a Holder to receive, store and present their VCs. This mobile wallet also provides an embedded crypto wallet combined with the world’s leading decentralized, encrypted private data storage network suitable for storing VC’s. This provides a simple interface for end users to interact with traditional finance products and blockchain digital assets in a regulatory compliant manner. Verida, in collaboration with cheqd and FinClusive, is thrilled to announce the launch of a verifiable KYC/KYB solution powered by digital credentials – to modernise client onboarding and monitoring across traditional and decentralised financial services on a global scale.