Microsoft is Developing a New Identity Service on the Bitcoin Blockchain
Tech giant, Microsoft revealed to the public that it’s building a new decentralized network that uses the Bitcoin blockchain to allow people to manage their own digital identities.
The project could be a step towards ensuring a more secure and private digital world, says Daniel Buchner, a senior program manager at the Microsoft Identity Division.
“We believe every person needs a decentralized, digital identity they own and control, backed by self-owned identifiers that enable secure, privacy-preserving interactions. This self-owned identity must seamlessly integrate into their lives and put them at the center of everything they do in the digital world.”
This centralized identity system will provide users with a digital ID that will allow them to securely interact over an interoperable system built on standards and open source components. This puts the user in a place of power and control – not on identity providers such as apps and services that provides us with emails and usernames, the most common digital identifiers that we use today.
One challenge they faced was blockchain system’s low transactional volume per second when compared to traditional systems.
“The most robust, decentralized, public blockchains operate at just tens of transactions per second, nowhere near the volume a world full of DIDs would demand.”
“Today, we’re announcing an early preview of a Sidetree-based DID network, called ION (Identity Overlay Network), which runs atop the Bitcoin blockchain. ION is a public, permission-less, open network anyone can use to create DIDs and manage their Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) state. “
“ION is designed to deliver the scale required for a world of DIDs, while inheriting and preserving the attributes of decentralization present in the Bitcoin blockchain. The code for the ION reference node is still under rapid development, and there are many aspects of the protocol left to implement before it is ready for testing on Bitcoin mainnet.”
“On low-powered consumer reference hardware we’ve observed tens-of-thousands of DID operations per second.”
Although ION utilizes the Bitcoin blockchain, Alex Simmons, vice president of program management at the Microsoft identity division, notes that the Sidetree design is “chain agnostic”, which means that Microsoft could build the platform on top of other blockchain-based networks.
In keeping with the theme of decentralization, Buchner says the tech giant is previewing ION to engage with the greater community.
“We’re sharing our work as early as possible – rough edges and all – to start a conversation with the community and encourage collaboration.”
“In the coming months, we’ll work with open source contributors and members of identity community to prepare for a public launch of the ION network on Bitcoin mainnet.”
More details on ION
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