What problems can the blockchain solve for the identity protection industry?

What problems can the blockchain solve for the identity protection industry?

I think a key factor that people don’t realize about the Internet in its TCP/IP form, which is the Internet that we all use today, every day, is that it is inherently not secure. Vint Cerf even said that if there was one thing he could do differently when he was helping create the modern Internet, he would have made encryption a central part of the protocol.

That’s the rub with blockchain, unlike the Internet it has security built-in from the get go. This allows for two things. First, it allows for secure storage and transfer, by default, of identity credentials. Second, it gives every consumer and user the opportunity to hold onto his own identity data. Since blockchain is decentralized by nature, there’s no need to store consumer data on a server to get hacked into and the data get leaked, as has happened so often to even some of the largest companies in the world. Point being, there’s no need for a company to protect identity data that they don’t even have. Blockchain’s decentralized nature allows for that.

I think the industry has it backwards: with blockchain you don’t need the identity protection industry. Blockchain is inherently identity protection. There is no need to protect something that isn’t on some company’s random server, and is cryptographically secured on your own device as a consumer or user.

Blockchain eliminates the middleman holding your identifying information, because you become the holder of that identifying information. If central servers aren’t required to store that information and get access to it, it behooves a company to engage in “data minimization,” which is holding as little user data as possible so that they’re not legally held liable for what is done or happens to that data. Certainly a company could offer a hybrid solution where they store accessible data on their servers allowing you to access your identity data across devices, but even then the user or customer ultimately holds access to their private keys with the adjoining password needed to access it. So a company could be a gateway to your blockchain-based identity, but they are really just a gateway, and aren’t holding any data that wouldn’t be accessible by the user if it’s a public blockchain.

It depends on what kind of identity is involved, but a major new avenue of communication, marketing, purchasing, and just existing overall is virtual reality and augmented reality. Companies like MoCo (https://mocotoken.io) are already aware of the advantages of using blockchain to handle identifiers and currency to create a platform that doesn’t include the shortcomings of the World Wide Web, itself. Something as simple as the MoCo Wallet and its adjoining MoCo Token solves many of the concerns around identity protection by creating a secure way to transact around the world in virtual reality.