Cost Per Verification (CPV)
Also called CPV, per-verification cost, cost per check, cost per proof event
Cost Per Verification is the simplest number a compliance or finance buyer puts in a spreadsheet when comparing identity-verification vendors: the price of one check, full stop. Vendor A charges $1.50, Vendor B charges $4.00: Vendor A looks cheaper, and for a single, one-off check, it is.
The metric is honest as far as it goes, and misleading past that point, for one specific reason: it treats every verification as an independent, unrelated event. It isn't. The same person opens a bank account, then a wallet, then a lending app, then gets asked to re-verify at the bank eighteen months later, and a pure CPV comparison prices every one of those events at that vendor's flat per-check rate, because that's what a per-verification-billed vendor actually charges: the same price the fifth time as the first.
Where it comes from
Nobody owns this metric. It's the same arithmetic, price divided by usage event, that Stripe applies to a card transaction, Twilio to an SMS, and Plaid to a bank-data call, generalized to identity checks by the IDV vendor market's own decades-old habit of quoting a flat per-verification price. Sumsub, Onfido, Jumio, Persona, and Veriff all publish or quote one. Solidus didn't invent the concept and doesn't claim to.
What it hides
A first-time identity check and a check on someone the system has already verified are, cryptographically, completely different problems. The first requires reading a document, running liveness, matching a face. The second, if the person kept a credential from the first check and the relying party is willing to accept it, requires verifying a signature. CPV, priced flat, charges the same for both, because almost the entire identity-verification industry bills per verification event with no reuse concept built in. The number that actually separates a portable-credential model from a traditional IDV vendor isn't CPV on the first check, it's what happens to cost on the second, third, and Nth check for a person who already went through the first one. That's Re-verification Cost, a separate entry, and this one exists to set that up honestly rather than to hide behind it.
Solidus's own number
Solidus prices a verification at $0.10 and a re-verification, which is a credential presentation, at $0.01. The published per-check rates of the vendors named here are Sumsub's document, face and AML tier ($1.50–2.50), Persona's self-serve rate ($1.50), and Onfido/Entrust's equivalent ($1.50–3.50 without AML).
See also
Re-verification Cost is the number that actually carries Solidus's argument, because it isn't about the first check. Total Cost of Ownership is the fuller comparison a buyer should run instead of CPV alone. Verification Reuse is the mechanism that makes a lower blended cost possible in the first place.
Where it comes from
Someone else specified this. Solidus assembles it.
Not a standard from any body. It is ordinary unit-economics arithmetic (price ÷ event count) borrowed from usage-based API pricing generally, the same math Stripe, Twilio, and Plaid use to price a transaction or a lookup, and from the identity- verification vendor market's own long-standing habit of quoting a flat per-check price. Sumsub, Jumio, Onfido, Persona, and Veriff all publish or quote one. No one owns this metric. Every "cost per verification" figure Solidus has ever published, in its own tokenomics fee schedule or elsewhere, is one more line in that same industry price list, not a new methodology Solidus originated.
How to check this
Written down. No implementation yet.
verify.solidus.network/pricing publishes the price, $0.10 per verification and $0.01 per re-verification, checkable by anyone. The incumbent prices above are quoted from Sumsub, Onfido/Entrust, Jumio, Persona, and Veriff's own public pricing, cited so the comparison isn't one-sided.