Centre, the consortium that has been established by global Fintech Circle and digital assets firm Coinbase (COIN: Nasdaq) to offer standards and governance for USD Coin (USDC), which has become one of the fastest-growing “digital dollar” currencies, reveals that recent MIT Digital Credentials Architect Kim Hamilton Duffy has joined the firm as Director of Identity and Standards to “lead Centre’s initiatives into decentralized identity.”
As mentioned in an update shared with CI, Duffy joins Centre after nearly 20 years spent working in software and digital architecture development “including a leadership role as CTO for blockchain-based digital credentials issuer Learning Machine, based on the Blockcerts open standard, which she co-developed with MIT Media Lab.”
Recently, Duffy had been working as an Architect at MIT’s Digital Credentials Consortium, a multi-university, international effort “designing the future of academic credentials, including the development of a Learner Wallet standard for the US Department of Education.”
Kim has “led decentralized identity standards alignment for several years as chair of the W3C Credentials Consortium, Decentralized Identity Foundation, and more.”
“As USDC continues to grow, we remain committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity, compliance and trust,” stated David Puth, CEO of Centre.
David added:
“Kim’s leading experience developing digital standards for blockchain-based credentials will prove extremely valuable as we expand to support this critical initiative. The future of the Centre Consortium, its partners and all USDC users will be well served from this work on decentralized identity. The potential benefit for advancing financial inclusion is enormous.”
In her new role at Centre, Duffy will be focused on creating an open-source, open-standard project that “brings decentralized identity to DeFi and CeFi and enables compliance in a privacy-preserving way, among other projects.”
Throughout this work, Duffy and Centre will “contribute to the evolution of decentralized identity standards and their applications alongside other organizations like the Decentralized Identity Foundation.”
Duffy said:
“I look forward to applying decentralized identity standards and technologies to help Centre continue to build trust in USDC and expand opportunities for financial inclusion. This is a phenomenal team, and I’m excited to join the consortium governing the fastest growing stablecoin in the market.”
Duffy has also previously worked at Microsoft, Usermind, and Expedia, among others, in software engineering and “digital architecture roles.”
She’s worked as Editor for IEEE and IET Blockchain and has “contributed to a number of decentralized identity standards and open source projects.” She “received an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University.”
