Digital Identity Crisis – Are You Truly in Control?

In this episode of The Optimism Show, Kris Gligoroski talks with Philip Sheldrake, a professional engineer and social science researcher, to discuss how Web3's approach to digital identity is deeply flawed and what we can do to fix it.

Unlike traditional identity models, Web3 is unintentionally recreating bureaucratic structures, which could lead to surveillance risks, limited agency, and centralized control over decentralized systems. Philip breaks down why this is happening, the dangers of reusable KYC & social graphs, and how we can take a more human-centered approach to identity with solutions like Addresso.

(00:07) How Web3 is getting identity wrong

(01:01) Philip’s background &a ...