Blockchain Applications in Identity
Blockchain Technology for Digital Identity
Blockchain technologies make tracking and managing digital identities both secure and efficient, resulting in seamless sign-on and reduced fraud.
Banking, healthcare, national security, citizenship documentation, online retailing or walking into a bar, all require identity authentication and authorization. I.D. Verification is a process intricately woven into commerce and culture worldwide. Due to the lack of common comprehension and often-unchecked cyberspace of personal information, Identity in the context of technology is facing significant hurdles. Events such as hacked databases and breached accounts are shedding light on the growing problems of a technologically advanced society, without entirely outpaced identity-based security innovations.
Alongside biometrics, blockchain technology offers a solution to many digital identity issues, where identity can be uniquely authenticated in an irrefutable, immutable, and secure manner. Current methods use problematic password-based systems of shared secrets exchanged and stored on insecure systems. Blockchain-based authentication systems are founded on irrefutable identity verification using digital signatures based on public key cryptography. In blockchain identity authentication systems, the only check performed is: was the transaction signed by the correct private key? The cryptography allows us to infer that whoever has access to the private key is the owner and the exact identity of the owner is deemed irrelevant within the parameters of this authentication protocol.
Our current centralized systems are identity-centric and profoundly broken. We only get one social security number, birthdate, and name. Using this information set as the keys to hundreds of different online accounts and portals, many necessary to essential day-to-day functions like banking, purchasing, and emailing, only protected by a single password is insecure for not only the funds and information held in those accounts.
This universal low-security standard opens individuals up to a world of probable possibilities like identity theft, fund theft, fraud, companies profiting from selling our personal data, and more. In many cases, it is mandatory for users to subject themselves to these security vulnerabilities if they want to online bank or order goods. With each online transaction and registration, we barter our personal information to gain access to services. One unwilling to share their personal information will automatically have lowered access to resources. As the brick and mortar world hangs on by a string of novelty, we will be nearly forced more than we already are to disclose more and more personal information to authenticate our actions.
Blockchain presents itself as an excellent solution to personal security woes and haphazard identity verification processes in the post-modern world. In this guide to blockchain applications in Identity we will further discuss the problems associated with centralized Identity authentication, the solutions decentralization offers, and specific use cases for Identity-related blockchain applications.