Achieve Decentralized Anonymous Self-Sovereign Identity with Unika
When blockchain was first conceived it was a breakthrough, the network was hailed by many as a revolutionary way to change the rigid financial industry and its total control over wealth transfer and storage. Starting from disrupting the financial sector, blockchain went further. Its versatile technology bringing up myriads of features made it extremely useful in different fields, some of them are DeFi and gaming which are actively developing nowadays. But many others are still on the waiting list: trading, voting, provenance, hospitality, and travel. Being still a nascent ecosystem, Web3 is seeking ways to welcome regulated industries of Web2 and at the same time reach a consensus on anonymous yet trustworthy relations between users and Web3 service providers.
Decentralized Self-Sovereign Identity in Web3
Blockchain has everything needed to develop a holistic decentralized self-sovereign identity (DSSI) concept which will be at the same time anonymous but until now it hasn’t happened yet. In our previous post, we shed some light on the identity issues existing in Web3 and the modern approaches to user identification. Those of you who have done the homework and read it know that right now there are NO truly user-centered DID providers able to help users build their anonymous DSSI and expand it to all blockchain ecosystems. Well, there haven’t been any until we stepped in. Unika is an anonymous decentralized identification protocol empowering Web3 with the needed tools to identify users and at the same time give them full control over personal data.
I think there is no need to explain why decentralized self-sovereign identity (DSSI) matters not only for you, me, and Mr. Jones but for the sake of our kids and the global digital world development. Humanity has passed through the dark ages of real slavery not to step into an online one but to find a way to escape it and build a better world instead based on us, as users, making decisions on our own.
Let’s take a journey to how we at Unika see it and what our mechanisms are to reach the goal of armouring users with an unprecedented level of privacy online and at the same time protect service providers from fraudulent behaviour from the side of malicious users.
Unika in a Nutshell
The basic concept of Unika anonymous identification protocol is simple: connect users’ biometric data with their blockchain addresses. And then, based on the data linked to blockchain addresses and the users’ activity online Unika builds its village of connections for everyone individually. If speaking about analogies we could compare the Unika protocol system to a Viking village in let’s say Sweden in XII ct., where everyone knows how other villagers look like to make sure that no one else could come and steal their women, or occupy a house on the village territory or act in any other malicious way, it means that they are able to stand up for themselves and protect the settlement. At the same time, some more experienced leaders of the village community know everything about anyone but don’t say a word not to ruin the existing connections between the people and the settlement community continues living in harmony, or at least reach some level of understanding possible for Vikings at that time.
That’s what Unika is doing: the protocol based on the multimodal biometric system ‘knows’ how users look like, links all existing public blockchain addresses to one unique personality, and stores the data securely unless the request is sent from the service provider to Unika and Unika redirects it to the user asking to provide any type of personal information. Then it’s the users’ turn to take a decision whether to share anything with the service or not. Now let’s dig into details and discuss how this Viking village looks from the inside.
What Makes Unika Trustworthy
The two main characteristics of Web3 are anonymity and decentralization. Any solution built for the blockchain ecosystem should keep up with these standards. If the decentralization concept is more or less clear and to start the development process one should just choose from many blockchains existing, or simply come up with a new one, the idea of full anonymity to some Web3 KYC service providers still remains alien. Some of them claim to delete users’ personal data as soon as the verification process is finished, and some simply say that they are not going to share users’ data with any third parties. But who can guarantee that the data is protected and DID providers won’t change their minds regarding users’ data?
- Decentralization
We have already discussed Unika’s decentralized architecture. Anyway, if you haven’t been keeping up with our news since day one, it’s worth mentioning again. Unika service is available through a uDapp or Unika web application where users could send their requests for identification. They are sending requests to smart contracts which minimize the fraud and help to automate the onboarding process. Smart contracts redirect users’ requests sent from their public blockchain address to the decentralized network of validators (uNodes). As soon as the request for identification is assigned to a validator the identification procedure begins. This is a short online video interaction between the user and the validator when the validator identifies a new unique user based on their biometric data and the system links this data with the blockchain address used to send a request. Right now Unika has only one biometric modality operating — facial recognition, but any other additional modalities could be added to introduce more layers of protection. The data received is stored in encrypted decentralized storages and can only be extracted in cases when users need to verify their identity in Web3 (to get instant access to any Web3 services for example) which is also performed by the network of validators.
- Anonymity
In the previous part we have discussed the flow of the identification process, now let’s dig into the details and the mechanisms behind that flow. The most important problem to be solved at this stage is how to safeguard users’ anonymity and make sure that users’ biometric facial data is not subjected to leaks and breaches. And it not only concerns the storage of users’ sensitive data but also the way users interact with Web3 service providers. Unika as a data aggregator could be an intermediary between these two parties and provides services with fact-based information about the user. Some services would like to make sure that the user is above 18, or provides only one blockchain address to get some bonus from the services, also, which country the user resides, and so on. In this case, services send a request to Unika and Unika redirects it to the user. Upon the request receival, the user makes up their mind to provide the data sought or not, while staying anonymous. As soon as Unika gets an answer from the user, it redirects it back to the service without revealing any other information. Because the Unika system works on smart contracts this long process of sending and receiving requests is done time-efficiently.
Unika managed to reach such a high level of users’ anonymity online with the help of Trusted Execution Environment (TEE).
ТЕЕ Application in Unika
Trusted Execution Environment is not a new thing for our digital reality. This is a secure area of the main processor located inside our hardware which protects the code and the data loaded inside concerning their integrity and confidentiality. The integrity of the data is safeguarded by TEE and prevents unauthorized entities from changing it as well as the code placed inside TEE cannot be modified or replaced. Unika is using TEE during any stage of the user identification process as well as to provide fact-based answers to the Web3 service providers to keep users anonymous and give them a higher level of security. To make sure that user and validator software is running in TEE they perform a quick check and then only start the identification. It means that as soon as Unika software starts running in TEE either on users’ or validators’ computers, no one and no other software can get access to the data processed there. Thus, the results of the identification procedure as well as the fact-based service provided by Unika are highly secured and protected.
Bottom Line
Based on the growing and ever-developing nature of Web3, it welcomes more industries from Web2 and consequently needs to come up with users’ identification standards to prevent frauds and data leakages. This task should have been performed in unorthodox ways as the blockchains ecosystem is based on confidentiality and decentralization, unlike Web2. The several existing DID providers in Web3 are doing great but have their limitations. This is where Unika — decentralized anonymous identification protocol steps up providing users’ identification without obtaining and/or revealing their sensitive data.
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