A Better World with Self-Sovereign Identity
Self-sovereign identity is a model for managing digital identities where individuals or businesses have complete control and ownership over their accounts and personal data. This is achieved through a public blockchain, where all information and personal data are encrypted. Only a user can access or share this data with others.
Users can choose what information they want to share. For instance, they can show a police officer that they have a driver’s license without revealing other information like their birthday, or they can prove they have a master’s degree without disclosing the university they attended. Sounds cool, right? In this article, I’d like to highlight a few not-so-obvious use cases of self-sovereign identities that make the world a much better place to live.
Let’s imagine that self-sovereign identities (SSIs) have become widely adopted, enabling users to verify everything such as their citizenship, university degrees, work history, certificates, government IDs, recommendations, community memberships, volunteering activities, travel information, and more.
Community Building: It will become very easy to create a community where only people who studied at the top 10 universities can join, or those who have Canadian citizenship, or those who have worked at Google, or those who have done volunteering work, or are professional chess players, or, well, any other criteria you can think of. Current technologies don’t allow this. Organizing community events will also become easier. Simply scan a visitor’s phone to allow entry to an event.
Job Search and Talent Discovery: Finding talent can be very difficult. While LinkedIn helps, it doesn’t cover everything, and people can often add information that isn’t true. With self-sovereign identities, job seekers can share verified details about their certificates, university degrees, contributions to open-source projects, recommendation letters, and feedback from previous workplaces. This will enable employers to find talent that meets their specific needs more accurately.
Travel and Immigration: Just as we don’t need a physical wallet to buy things from a supermarket, we shouldn’t need to carry a passport to travel. When it comes to proving documents and identity, we often have to go from place to place to gather the necessary paperwork. Self-sovereign identities (SSIs) can solve this issue. Citizens will avoid bureaucratic hurdles, and government organizations will experience fewer headaches.
Healthcare Records Management: Patients can manage and control access to their medical records. They can grant temporary access to doctors or healthcare providers as needed, ensuring privacy and accuracy of their health information.
Conclusion
This is only a subset of what can be done with self-sovereign identity. What we need are official verifiers who will give credentials to users. These verifiers are governments, universities, and official organizations that will create the basic blocks to enable all these new use cases to emerge and create a more civilized world for every one of us.
This is just a subset of what can be achieved with self-sovereign identity. What we need are official verifiers who can provide credentials to users. These verifiers will be governments, universities, and official organizations, creating the foundational elements that enable these new use cases to emerge and foster a more civilized world for all of us.
