cheqd is a Web 3.0 startup founded by an ambitious and experienced team in the field of self-sovereign identity (SSI). SSI is a new paradigm for exchanging trusted digital data related to people, companies, and things in a much more secure and privacy-preserving fashion that puts people in control of their data. Far too often, digital identity services online are slow, user-hostile, and expensive for businesses to process. It costs anywhere from $10 onwards to verify the identity of people online, and upwards of $100s for corporate entities. Over the past few years many startups, established ID companies, governments, and non-profits have used decentralised identity to give people more control back of their data and make its use secure and transparent.