Civic (CVC) offers “flexible identity verification technology” for businesses by using “digital identity as a gateway for decentralized finance” on the Solana blockchain, according to the project’s website.

According to Messari, “Civic imagines a broad set of applications such as travel documentation, banking, credit, and web credentials.”

In June 2017, Civic released a white paper outlining plans for a token sale: Some 1 billion tokens were created, with one-third allocated for sale, one-third given to companies and users to accelerate growth, and one-third remaining in the company’s inventory. The sale raised $33 million.

“We think there’s a lot of power in the network effect of being able to have your identity and bring it with you wherever you go,” CEO Chris Hart said in a September 2021 interview on YouTube. “This is kind of a self-sovereign model, insofar as you should be able to take your identity, bring it with you and use it in a variety of use cases, whether that’s access management, or logging into a website, or to prove who you are in a variety of contexts.”

Under a token-based system, network validators will receive CVC tokens – set up as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain – “when other participants utilize their attestations to prove identities.” Users received CVC for providing their data more securely and privately through the ecosystem.

The goal was to reduce the overall cost of “KYC, remove inefficiencies, enhance security and privacy, greatly improve user experience and disrupt the current identity verification supply chain,” according to a blog post. “KYC” stands for know your customer and is a staple of international anti-money-laundering regulations.

Civic, based in San Francisco, raised $2.75 million in seed funding in February 2016. In July of that year, the company announced its official launch and public beta of its app. At the time, the app simply alerted members when their social security numbers were being used with one of the company’s partners.

In May 2017, Civic announced its Secure Identity Platform, or SIP, offering users the opportunity to store and secure their digital identities on their mobile phones, similar to a digital wallet. The service came with one-step, multi-factor authentication with biometrics and a decentralized architecture, according to a blog post at the time. The Bitcoin blockchain was used to validate identity credentials using cryptographic infrastructure, but personal data was not stored on the blockchain.

In May 2018, Civic announced a system allowing app users to verify their date of birth on a vending machine set up to dispense 12-ounce Budweiser beer cans.

In July 2018, the company introduced Identity.com, a decentralized identity verification ecosystem.

In December 2018, Civic announced a partnership with Johnson Controls to enable building visitors to verify their identities using the Civic App. The system would be deployed at three New York locations with an expected volume of 20,000 visitors per month. Instead of presenting an ID card or other verification with a reception, visitors could instead simply scan a QR code onto a check-in kiosk with their Civic App.

In June 2020, Civic announced its Civic Wallet was available on the App store and Google Play. With the coronavirus pandemic raging at the time, the company said that “in response to the market need for proof-of-health verification, it will offer the ability to provide secure and regulation-compliant health checks for employers.”

In March 2021, Civic announced a technology integration with the Solana blockchain, citing the “high fees and slow transactions” on early blockchains such as Ethereum. “Because of Solana’s technology, the wallet will be high-speed and have low transaction fees,” according to a blog post.

“We believe that identity will be a necessity for businesses in Solana’s ecosystem in order to comply with global regulations in the near future if DeFi is to truly scale for mainstream consumer adoption,” Nancy Li, director of marketing, wrote in April. “Our new products will offer more privacy and a more secure experience for DeFi products and other application layer technologies.”

Co-founder Vinny Lingham, who previously founded the digital gift-card platform Gyft, which was acquired by First Data Corp. in 2014, serves as chairman of the board. Fellow co-founder Jonathan Smith serves as CTO. Chris Hart, a former CFO of Guidebook, joined in 2016 as chief operating officer and was promoted to CEO in August 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile. In a YouTube interview in September 2021, he said he used to build data centers for high-frequency options trading firms. “We’re just starting to tap into the potential” of blockchain technologies.