Essentia describes itself as "the framework for your decentralized digital life".
The platform fuctions as a decentralized operating system. It can be accessed by humans, machines, IoT devices, and more.
With Essentia, decentralized and centralized resources are integrated in one single place. Things like user data and personal data are connected to someone's digital ID, and that digital ID can be anonymous, pseudo anonymous, or public.
Overall the Essentia whitepaper describes the platform as the multi-asset and multichain decentralized swiss-knife that everyone can use and own.
In more straightforward terms, Essentia is a persistent digital ID you can use across multiple platforms services, and environments. Essentia implementations can already be seen in Ethereum, EtherDelta, Storj, and IPFS, among other major blockchain platforms.