Among the variety of non-financial use cases, blockchain technology can be applied to identity applications in areas such as digital identities, passports, e-residency, birth certificates, wedding certificates, IDs, online account logins, etc. Creating an identity on blockchain can give individuals greater control over who has their personal information and how they access it.
By combining the decentralized blockchain principle with identity verification, a digital ID can be created to act as a digital watermark which can be assigned to every online transaction of any asset. Here are some of the pioneers in building blockchain-based identity management and authentication solutions for cross-industry applications:
2WAY.IO effectively transforms public nodes into private nodes by adding a permissions layer. Private nodes can connect information silos & secure communication channels. They’re user-in-control (privacy-by-design & security-by-design) and require no trade-off between security and UX. These systems are both trusted third-party- and blockchain-agnostic; they only require an intermediary or blockchain when both parties agree to add one to their interaction.
Atencoin is a first-generation, identity-based compliant digital currency. It is headed up by the National Aten Coin (NAC) Foundation, an organization that supports the identification of blockchain-based technology and digital currencies.
BlockAuth enables users to own and operate their own identity registrar that allows them to submit their information for verification.
Blockstack provides a decentralized domain name system (DNS), decentralized public key distribution system, and registry for apps and user identities. Personal user APIs ship with the Blockstack app and handle everything from identity and authentication to data storage. Applications can request permissions from users and then gain read-and-write access to user resources.
Bitnation is a governance 2.0 platform that is powered by blockchain technology. Its goal is to provide the same services that governments provide, but in a decentralized and voluntary manner, unbound by geography. Bitnation has worked out an identification solution such as blockchain passport and a marriage certificate.
BlockVerify provides blockchain-based anti-counterfeit solutions. It uses blockchain technology to improve anti-counterfeit measures in different industries such as pharmaceuticals, luxury items, diamonds and electronics.
Cambridge Blockchain LLC is developing its digital identity software with several leading global financial institutions, with commercial deployments planned for late 2017. The company’s distributed architecture resolves the competing challenges of transparency and privacy, resulting in faster customer onboarding, lower costs, and enhanced compliance through a single, trusted and consistent view of customer reference data. Cambridge Blockchain has won FinTech competitions including BBVA Open Talent 2016 and the Santander InnoVentures Distributed Ledger Challenge. Cambridge Blockchain graduated from the 2016 FinTech Innovation Lab – run by the Partnership Fund for New York City and Accenture.
Civic is a blockchain-based identity management platform that allows users to register and validate their personal identity information and lock their identity in order to prevent identity theft and fraudulent activity on their credit reports. Civic aims to tackle the problem of consumer identity theft and reducing online identity fraud.
Credits platform enables enterprises to quickly and easily build robust blockchains that address the challenges of establishing provenance, authentication and reconciliation faced by many industries. The platform allows to create encrypted digital identities to substitute dozens of usernames and passwords while offering greater security features would save enterprises, institutions, governments and customers, time, energy and money. A golden record for identity which would work not only at a bank level but across the globe in all electronic environments.
CredyCo provides document verification SaaS, which uses a smart contracts and identity technology built on top of the blockchain to ensure the credibility and irrefutability of all statements.
Cryptid eliminates the possibility of counterfeit identification by adding factors of identification and encryption. Cryptid takes the data provided in the form and package it into a compact format readable by our systems and generate your Cryptid identification data. All of the data is encrypted with the provided password after which it is permanently transferred to the blockchain. The customer is then given a unique identification number that points to the information on the block chain and can be stored on almost anything from magnetic stripes to QR codes.
Evernym is a global, fully open-source, attribute-based, self-sovereign identity graph network built on an advanced, dedicated, privacy-enhancing, public permissioned distributed ledger.
ExistenceID is a secure digital identity system for safe storage and sharing of valuable identity documents. A private identity capsule rates users’ total identity so they can prove that they are real. Only users choose who and when can access different parts of their identity. At the same time, ExistenceID has zero knowledge of users’ personal account.
Guardtime’s BLT – Blockchain Standard for Digital Identity – is an authentication and signature protocol meant to replace RSA as the standard for digital signatures. In contrast to RSA’s reliance on quantum-vulnerable asymmetric key cryptography, BLT is based on Guardtime’s quantum-secure Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI) technology, which uses only hash function cryptography.
HYPR biometric security suite provides enterprises a fully interoperable solution to secure users across mobile, desktop and IoT systems. HYPR enhances the user experience by allowing you to choose from voice, face, touch and eye recognition. Our decentralized authentication platform allows enterprises to leverage biometrics without worrying about hackers attacking a biometric server or centralized password database.
Identifi is a blockchain-based startup creating address book where users can link their personal profiles and identifiers to form a trusted identity. In addition to keeping contact details such as phone number or bitcoin address up-to-date, the user can give other users trust ratings and feedback.
Open Identity Exchange (OIX) is a non-profit, technology agnostic, collaborative cross-sector membership organization with the purpose of accelerating the adoption of digital identity services based on open standards. OIX’s
OIXNet is a registry. It is an official online and publicly-accessible repository of documents and information relating to identity systems and identity system participants. Referred to as a “registry,” it functions as an official and centralized source of such documents and information, much like a government-operated recorder of deeds. That is, individuals and entities can register documents and information with the OIXnet Registry to provide notice of their contents to the public, and members of the public seeking access to such documents or information can go to that single authoritative location to find them.
KYC-Chain is a novel platform built over the convenience and security of DLT, allowing users to manage their digital identity securely, while businesses and financial institutions are able to manage customer data in a reliable and easy manner.
Netki provides open source and open standard-based digital identity solutions that allow financial service companies to meet their compliance requirements on both public and private blockchains. Netki Wallet Name Service (WNS) translates easy-to-remember names like “wallet.myname.me” into bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) wallet addresses.
ShoCard is a digital identity that protects consumer privacy and is as easy to understand and use as showing one’s driver’s license. It’s optimized for mobile and so secure that even a bank can rely on it. A user’s identity is encrypted, hashed and then written to the blockchain, where it can be called up when needed. Users would, in effect, give banks temporary access to the private side of this blockchain record in order to verify identity. Once that is done, the bank creates its own record that can be consulted in the future to determine that a certain Joe Smith is really Joe Smith.
UniquID provides secure identity management, integrated with fingerprint and other biometry on personal devices. Ready to be deployed on custom hardware, servers, personal computers or smartphones and tablets, UniquID Wallet runs also on battery and low-powered devices, providing integrity and interoperability at the edge of one’s infrastructure.
uPort, developed by ConsenSys, is building a secure, easy-to-use system for self-sovereign identity, built on Ethereum. The uPort technology consists of three main components: smart contracts, developer libraries, and a mobile app. The mobile app holds the user’s keys. Ethereum smart contracts form the core of the identity and contain logic that lets the user recover their identity if their mobile device is lost. Finally, the developer libraries are how third-party app developers would integrate support for uPort into their apps.