Tykn - Restoring Standard Lives to Unknown People

Introduction

There are thousands of victim of war refugees or low life people who are unknown out there due to the loss or destruction of their vital documents, such as birth certificates, academic certificates, and land certificates, either through a war or detrimental incident.

These people cannot verify their authenticity as they have no means to do so even if they have the soft copies. They are considered unknown people living a risky life with a real threat.

To restore lives to such victims Tey came up with Tykn to solve the problems by keeping and securing vital documents like birth certificates and land certificates on the blockchain or distributed ledger.

Tey El-Rjula, who can "see challenges as opportunities" and is the co-founder of Tykn, suffered the loss of vital records to war himself. Instead of break down, he saw this as an opportunity, which led him to develop the company Tykn in 2016 to free the word from similar problems in the future.
Toufic Al Rjoula is indeed a great motivator!

"We’re giving invisible children a chance to have an incredible life” — Tey Al-Rjula

What is Tykn?

Tykn is an innovative blockchain technology that aims to use the distributed ledger to build digital identity devices that are safe, private and interoperable electronic identity, authentication and trust service (eIDAS) tools for both NGOs and governments, delivering complete correspondence with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

Tykn is categorized under "Identity & Reputation" based in Netherlands.

The Name "Tykn"

The name Tykn was derived from the pigeon named "Tyke". Tyke, who served for Britain’s Royal Air Force, was the first pigeon to be bestowed with a Dickin Medal in reward for the rescue of ditched aircrew during World War 2 through the messages delivered with other two unnamed pigeons.

The pigeon named "Tyke" inspired the company name "Tykn" and the company's logo, with the similar intention of saving people's lives and restoring their standardizations by carrying valuable information related to life and death, across borders on the blockchain. Furthermore, the company's name "Tykn" pronounced "taiken" flukily in Japan means "supreme authority", which showcases what the blockchain is; everything on the blockchain is kept untampered eternally.

The Story Began with Tey

Toufic "Tey" El-Rjoula, the co-founder of Tykn, was born in Kuwait 🇰🇼 during the Gulf War.
In 2012, Tey found himself an unknown man. On his Dutch driver's license, the city he was born, such as "London" or "Berlin", is declared as "Unbekend" (translates as Unknown) because he was born during the war and the birth registries were destroyed. Thus, Tey does not have a birth certificate. Even if copies were to exist, neither he nor the issuance could verify it.

In 2014, Tey, who had initially been given a work permit for five years, began an asylum application in a refugee camp in the Netherlands 🇳🇱, where he was forced to move to and his work permit was terminated. Having experienced the pains of being an unknown man in the Netherlands for two years, Tey knew the pain of Syrian refugees who are unable to verify their documents or who have lost other vital documents, like birth certificate and academic certificates, during their refugees' journey. Tey was able to meet with more than a thousand unknown men, women, and children at the end of his stay in a Syrian refugee camp in Netherlands.

A third of the refugees in Europe are children, and even as they're fortunate to get documented, countless numbers in Syrian refugee camps do not have certificates, and newborns in the camps are unable to complete the birth registration process, because of the economic, geographical and complex administrative barriers.

Finally, the experiences the refugees shared with Tey within the Dutch refugee camp involving the hardships they suffered as "invisible individuals" gave him the concept and motivation to build Tykn, in conjunction with social entrepreneurs Khalid Maliki and Jimmy J.P. Snoek, so as to work on providing self-sovereign identity to all.

Merit Awards and Other Achievements

After Tykn began activities in the year 2016, Tykn became part of Google-powered hackathon programme; Startup Weekend Utrecht. As part of Tykn achievements; and as a result of this programme; Tykn was able to design a platform that would verify documents and authorize them digitally through the help of the Bitcoin blockchain platform. This; among others; earned Tykn the number one spot.

Because of this victorious feat, Tykn was selected from tonnes of other contenders to be part of the Amsterdam acceleration programme.

The winning sprees continued, as Tykn was also seen to bag in the prestigious Spindle Innovation Awards. All these earned Tykn the best ICO pitch of the year, and also has earned it a place in the Accenture Innovation Awards.

Conclusion

Tykn is leveraging blockchain technology for unknown people like war refugees to build identity devices and store their vital documents on the Tykn blockchain providing them self-sovereignty which can be operated by NGOs and governments.

The story began with Tey after he suffered the loss of his birth certificate due to the Gulf war in Kuwait. Tykn has won several awards since it was developed, the latest award till date (22nd of Oct, 2018) was "Best ICO Pitch" during the Blockchain Innovation Conference in the month of June, 2018.

The Tykn project is a great one started by a self-motivated person Toufic "Tey" El-Rjoula.