Put Your Trust in Twala

Signing documents in the Philippines still involves a plethora of manually printing, sending, and revising documents, all of which are incredibly time-consuming. With rapid advancements in technology, document sending and signing becomes more convenient with the help of the internet. Not only this, but these documents become more secure since they are sent digitally from end-to-end. This is whereTwala comes in

Twala is a next-generation e-Signature platform that is powered by Ethereum blockchain smart contracts so that everyone can legally sign documents online. It is a digital identity and digital signature solutions platform powered by blockchain technology for the Web2 and Web3 ecosystems. Twala has 3 main products: Twala ID, Twala Sign, and Twala Network. 

Twala ID is a privacy-focused and consent-driven self-sovereign digital ID to help individuals prove their identity online powered by zero-knowledge proof technology. This is made possible by advanced cryptography technology. Meanwhile, for Twala Sign, it is a digital signature and document management solution to help businesses automate their paper-based workflows and processes to help them get more customers, reduce costs, and reduce the risks of document and identity fraud. Lastly for Twala Network, it is a specialized blockchain network with built-in protocols for digital identity and document security,  is interoperable with more than 60 major blockchain networks, and powers all Twala Ecosystem apps. With this, why don’t you join me in learning more about Twala with its Co-Founder and CEO, Jeffrey Reyes.    

What is a blockchain? And what is its importance for the future of technology?

When we hear the word ‘blockchain’, the first thing that comes to mind would probably be Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies. However, the truth is that a blockchain is broader than that: it’s one of the Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT). A blockchain is a ledger or a record. For example, there are 10 people holding a ledger each. A transaction could be a payment or record of a contract. All these 10 people with ledgers will write the transaction on their ledgers. When we say decentralized, this means that the information is distributed to different ledgers. No one has full control of these ledgers. No central authority manages or controls these ledgers. The only thing that you can do with a blockchain network is to record transactions, one cannot edit nor delete a transaction. This makes data on a blockchain immutable. One cannot alter or tamper with any record.

Why did you decide to establish Twala and what problems does it address?

When I was an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) in the past, I was frustrated with how the Philippines dealt with documents: every transaction required printing. Based on my experiences in international companies, they have been dealing with documents using eSignatures for the longest time. At one point, I worked at a company that shared a building with the world’s biggest eSignature company. I asked myself “Why aren’t we doing this in the Philippines?” “Is it legal to process documents digitally and using eSignatures?” I asked my law friends about enabling laws in the Philippines that supported this argument. Surprisingly, we had an enabling law about this since 2000. Both public and private entities tried to rectify this law to give way to the future of processing documents. Only those eSignatures that comply with the e-commerce act of the Philippines law will be deemed as valid. Along with this, the hassle of storing massive amounts of important physical documents proved to be incredibly costly since they needed storage and needed to be protected against termites, fire, and floods among many others.

During the pandemic, people needed to send documents via courier instead of processing these online. This was an incredible hassle due to delivery and printing fees, including time inefficiency. Along with this, physical documents are easily forged. A lot of people think that signing a document digitally is just attaching one’s eSignature into a file, saving it as a PDF, and sending it over. However, the truth is that that is not legal. If one does this without any security, eSignatures are easier to duplicate and forge. A digital signature is a piece of code that one attaches to a document to make sure that the document cannot be tampered and can be traced to your identity. If ever the document is subject to the court, then there will be a way to prove the authenticity of the document. It’s like a digital seal which uses cryptographic technology. Blockchain passes all the requirements of the ecommerce act of the Philippines and also passes other laws and regulations around the world. When we digitize all these documents, all these problems go away. This is how we started Twala.

How are you able to harness the power of the Ethereum blockchain and transfer it to an online eSignature platform?

When we were doing research and development, a question that we asked ourselves was “What blockchain network was perfect to execute this?” Ethereum was the largest and most used blockchain network. With this, Ethereum made sense. It has a massive amount of financial value locked in within the network and the support for smart contracts. Twala can be used by developers in tandem with other existing tools of the Ethereum ecosystem.

What makes Twala unique from other eSignature platforms and applications?

It’s not just document signing that we provide. We also provide a digital identity platform to help businesses verify individual identities most especially in the regulating sector like banks and fintechs since they are required to Know Their Customers (KYC). We provide tools for one to issue, sign, and verify digital IDs, credentials, and documents to help bring back control of individual data and for a more secure and faster workflow for businesses in both Web2 and Web3 ecosystems. Twala has built its own blockchain network based on the Ethereum virtual machine. It’s based on Ethereum technology but it’s based on a separate blockchain network. That blockchain network, I believe, is the very first Filipino-made blockchain network with built-in protocols for digital identity and document security. Amazingly, the Twala network is also connected to 60 other major blockchain networks. This means that one can identify the authenticity of a document not just in our network, but in 60 other blockchain networks. If the Twala network gets compromised in the future, one can still verify the authenticity using 60 other blockchain networks. This makes our technology more secure. For example, how does one prove their age? Through Twala, this is proven without having to reveal the date of birth. One has full control of their data since we do not store these in a single Twala server. Only the hash is stored in the blockchain.

As one of the Startup World Cup x Wildfire finalists, what was your experience like? How can this experience help your company grow? 

I had a very good experience with this competition. We were able to get the exposure that we needed across investors, users, and the startup community. It gave us an avenue to showcase our technology towards a lot of people, not just in the Philippines but internationally as well. When I joined the competition, I found out that a lot of the startups there were actually Twala users. It makes us incredibly happy that other startups use our tech. Overall, it was a very fulfilling experience joining this competition.

Jeffrey Reyes is the Co-Founder and CEO of Twala, an e-Signature platform that makes document signing online secure and verifiable. Twala’s overall objective is to transform manual printing, signing, scanning, and delivering of documents and making them digital, safe, convenient and verifiable. Driven by his career and personal experiences, Jeffrey was inspired to create Twala to make profound change for the Philippines. With Twala, manually processing documents will soon be a thing of the past.

Visit www.techshake.asia if you would like to know and connect more with Twala.