A First Look at Identity Management Schemes on the Blockchain

TL;DR

This paper examines blockchain-based identity management schemes, evaluating three prominent proposals to assess their potential to improve decentralization, transparency, and user control in digital identity systems.

Contribution

It introduces the landscape of DLT-based IdM and provides an evaluation of three key proposals using a comprehensive analytical framework.

Findings

uPort shows strong decentralization features

Sovrin enhances user control and privacy

ShoCard offers a balance between security and usability

Abstract

The emergence of distributed ledger technology (DLT) based upon a blockchain data structure, has given rise to new approaches to identity management that aim to upend dominant approaches to providing and consuming digital identities. These new approaches to identity management (IdM) propose to enhance decentralisation, transparency and user control in transactions that involve identity information; but, given the historical challenge to design IdM, can these new DLT-based schemes deliver on their lofty goals? We introduce the emerging landscape of DLT-based IdM, and evaluate three representative proposals: uPort; ShoCard; and Sovrin; using the analytic lens of a seminal framework that characterises the nature of successful IdM schemes.