KILT Protocol (KILT) operates as a decentralised blockchain network that enables the creation, claiming, issuance, submission, and verification of digital credentials.
Its primary objective is to provide a self-sovereign digital identity system, empowering individuals to maintain control over their data and selectively share information.
KILT delivers secure and scalable digital identity solutions, establishing it as a standard for identity verification in Web3 applications.
What is KILT Protocol?
Initially, identity and trust between entities functioned in a completely decentralised manner. Individuals established direct trust relationships based on personal observations.
This approach presented significant limitations:
- Personal social networks remained inherently limited in scope
- Assessing an individual’s trustworthiness presented considerable challenges
- Proving one’s identity to unfamiliar parties proved difficult
As human societies evolved into larger communities, villages, and cities, these limitations became more pronounced, necessitating new solutions.
People developed mechanisms to establish trust relationships between groups through attestations, allowing individuals to gain trust from those who recognised the attesting organisation.
Examples include carpenter’s guilds, monasteries, or Scottish clans verifying attributes about individuals. With the emergence of large bureaucratic nations, the authorities issuing attestations and the scope of trust relationships expanded accordingly.
While trust organisation became increasingly centralised, individuals maintained responsibility for their identity information. Official documents like passports exemplify this model—trusted entities issue credentials directly to holders, who retain full control and utilise them as needed.
The advent of the internet and Web 2.0 transformed this landscape, with services consolidating into centralised platforms such as Google, Meta, and X. These entities no longer simply attest to digital identities but now store and control users’ data.
They can potentially restrict access to services at their discretion. Companies frequently retain data for business purposes, collecting additional information each time users access their services, which is then aggregated and commercialised for advertising.
The Architecture Behind KILT
KILT functions as a parachain within the Polkadot ecosystem, delivering secure, scalable, and decentralised digital identity solutions.
Polkadot focuses on interoperability and provides its Substrate development framework to create parallel blockchains (parachains) that derive security from Polkadot’s Relay Chain.
KILT establishes the infrastructure for decentralised digital identities by facilitating the generation of identifiers and the creation, issuance, and verification of digital credentials.
The protocol utilises trustless and immutable blockchain technology to ensure data privacy and control.
Its open-source blockchain protocol enables the issuance of verifiable and revocable credentials within Web3. Through its Software Development Kit (SDK), anyone can develop applications and services on the KILT infrastructure.
The protocol allows individuals, organisations, and enterprises to claim various attributes that trusted entities can then attest to.
Individuals claiming attributes maintain complete control over their data, determining with whom to share specific information and having the ability to conceal certain details for privacy protection.
Origins and Development
The concept of KILT Protocol emerged in 2018 when Ingo Rübe identified blockchain technology’s potential to address certain Web2 challenges. The original White Paper was published in May 2019, with tokenomics released in August 2021.
These tokenomics were specifically designed with slight inflation to ensure long-term sustainability and stability.
KILT’s mainnet initially launched in September 2021 within Polkadot’s pre-testing environment, Kusama, to address digital on-chain identity through self-sovereign decentralised identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials.
In November 2021, governance transferred from BOTLabs GmbH, the initial developer, to KILT token holders. The Kusama launch enabled faster iteration and fostered application and service development on KILT.
Self-sovereign identity (SSI) implementation was enhanced by various “built on KILT” components, including:
- Sporran: A wallet for KILT Coins and credentials
- Stakeboard: A staking platform supporting KILT collators
- SocialKYC: An identity verification service for social media credentials
- DIDsign: A solution for signing files using the user’s DID within browsers
- web3name: A cross-ecosystem name service linked to addresses
- AssetDIDs: An identifier ensuring NFT authenticity across multiple chains
In October 2022, KILT became the first parachain to fully relocate from Kusama to Polkadot. This transition moved it from a dynamic environment to a more stable, production-ready, and secure ecosystem, enabling KILT to provide enhanced decentralised digital identity solutions for both individuals and enterprises.
Digital Identity in the Modern Era
In the physical world, we are accustomed to credentials such as passports and educational certificates, which present inherent trust and control challenges.
These issues become particularly evident in Web2 environments, where users typically sacrifice control and privacy to centralised institutions that monetise their personal data.
This situation not only creates heightened security vulnerabilities, as demonstrated by numerous large-scale data breaches, but also introduces substantial centralisation risks.
Digital identity solutions built on distributed ledger technology now provide a highly scalable, privacy-preserving, secure, and cost-effective approach to regaining control and privacy over user data in a self-sovereign manner.
In this context, Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) offers users a legitimate pathway toward ownership and control of their digital identity, while parties requesting credentials can easily verify their issuing source.
KILT Protocol Implementation
KILT implements the W3C standards for Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials, establishing decentralised digital identities as a fundamental component of Web3, the next generation of the Internet. The KILT Protocol facilitates the generation of identifiers (DIDs) on users’ devices and manages the issuance and possession of credentials.
The process works as follows: an attester generates a credential at a user’s (claimer’s) request, describing specific attributes that the attester can verify.
The attester then issues this credential to the user. KILT maintains a checksum (hash) of the credential on the KILT blockchain. This blockchain technology allows users to demonstrate the authenticity and validity of their documents to anyone they choose.
KILT is designed with privacy as a priority and does not store personal information on the blockchain. While personal data is stored in the credential itself, the blockchain only contains hash values.
When users need to verify particular attributes with a KILT-enabled service, they share their credential with that service.
If the receiving service (verifier) trusts the issuing entity (attester), it can verify the credential’s validity by creating the hash value and confirming its presence on the KILT blockchain.
KILT Token Functions
The native token of the KILT Protocol serves three primary functions:
- On-chain utility: KILT tokens can be locked to obtain voting rights in on-chain governance, where increased locking duration enhances voting power, known as conviction voting. KILT is also required to anchor credentials, DIDs, CTypes, and trust hierarchies.
- Payment: For digitally revocable credentials, claimers can pay attesters, while attesters pay transaction fees to anchor these credentials on the blockchain.
- Staking: Staking rewards incentivise collators, who maintain the KILT blockchain data, to collect transactions and build blocks. These rewards also encourage delegators to support trusted collators, thereby increasing trust and security within the system.
KILT Tokenomics Overview
The native token of KILT Protocol, KILT, facilitates staking, governance, and DID operations. The protocol has established a total supply of 290 million tokens, comprising both pre-mined tokens and those issued through inflation.
As of March 2025, approximately 200 million KILT are in circulation, resulting in a market capitalisation of $60 million.
Although KILT reached its peak value of $13 in December 2021, it has subsequently stabilised at approximately $0.30 following a 97% decline, reflecting broader market adjustments.
The token distribution consists of 50% allocated for crowdloan rewards and community initiatives (150 million KILT, subject to partial vesting), 20% designated for the team (vested), 15% directed toward ecosystem development, and 15% retained in the Treasury.
KILT stakers contribute to network security by supporting collators and earn between 8-12% APY. The protocol maintains a 5% annual inflation rate to support ongoing network growth.
The creation of DIDs and anchoring of credentials incur fees, a portion of which are burned to manage token supply, although initial focus centered on adoption rather than deflationary measures.
The governance model links staking rewards to participation, ensuring stakeholder alignment. Treasury funds support ecosystem development, exemplified by a 2024 grant allocated to enhance the Sporran wallet’s usability.
Future Prospects for KILT
KILT’s privacy-focused identity layer addresses a fundamental requirement within the Web3 ecosystem, demonstrated by over 1 million registered DIDs and tangible real-world adoption through partnerships with organisations like Deloitte and services such as SocialKYC.
The protocol’s $40 million Total Value Locked (TVL) and strategic position within the Polkadot ecosystem underscore its potential.
For investors, KILT represents exposure to innovation in digital identity solutions, though its significant price decline of 97% indicates associated investment risks.
As Polkadot transitions into its 2.0 phase, KILT’s interoperable, self-sovereign credentials could potentially transform online trust mechanisms, positioning it as a notable project in 2025.
While the KILT identity ecosystem already supports numerous services and applications, a primary objective remains increasing adoption of its underlying solutions to achieve the broader goal of returning personal data control to individuals through decentralisation, rather than allowing digital identity to be dominated by a few centralised entities.
According to the project’s roadmap, additional enterprise integrations utilising KILT credentials and DIDs are planned.
With artificial intelligence gaining prominence and data collection by Web2 companies becoming increasingly pervasive, the timing for digital, self-sovereign identity solutions appears opportune, with KILT well-positioned to capture market share in this evolving landscape.
Conclusion
KILT Protocol represents a significant advancement in digital identity management, addressing the fundamental challenges of privacy, control, and trust that have plagued online interactions since the rise of Web2 platforms.
By implementing W3C standards for DIDs and Verifiable Credentials within the Polkadot ecosystem, KILT has created a comprehensive framework that returns data ownership to individuals while maintaining the necessary trust mechanisms for digital interactions.
The protocol’s journey from concept in 2018 to a fully operational parachain on Polkadot demonstrates both technical capability and strategic vision.
With over one million DIDs already in use and partnerships with established enterprises like Deloitte, KILT has shown that decentralised identity solutions can achieve practical adoption beyond theoretical applications.