There are many problems with the current state of identity systems. Digital identity is fragmented and siloed between various service providers, prohibiting a holistic view, and delivering poor user experience necessitating repetitive registrations and logins with usernames and passwords. Identity federation and SSO helped by eliminating some of the problems but the recent Facebook exploit demonstrated that user data is at constant risk if data was stored on central servers. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is a new concept allowing the user to take full control over its data again and reducing the dependency on central services. Emerging standards like W3C Decentralized Identity (DID) and Verifiable Credentials (VC) facilitate interoperability between different SSI networks which reduces friction across corporate boundaries by allowing to exchange and reuse rich attestations. A SSI system can be built on any Blockchain or DLT platform. uPort is such a SSI platform based on the Ethereum blockchain. No PII is stored on the ledger and the creation as well as the use of identities does not have any cost to the user and consumer. For most people Ethereum is only the public ledger only although solutions exist to easily deploy private Ethereum networks with different consensus mechanisms. uPort can also be used in conjunction with private Ethereum networks.
Key takeaways:
- How to easily setup blockchain solutions based on Ethereum for enterprises
- Understand the concept of Decentralized and Self-Sovereign Identities (SSI)
- Know how uPort's SSI platform could be used for enterprises
