The Role of Decentralized Identity in the Internet Computer Blockchain Ecosystem

Published in

Coinmonks

4 min readAug 14, 2023

Since the beginning of human history, humans have always tended to affiliate or identify themselves with a particular group having certain unique characteristics.

However, with the passage of time and the growing risks associated with revealing one’s identity, people today have become more sensitive to revealing their personal identity to others. Of course, we can’t blame them for wanting to keep themselves safe at least relatively from perceived dangers.

“humans have always tended to affiliate or identify themselves…”

More recently there have been a lot of innovations and legal regulations around preserving the privacy of humans. For example, Worldcoin recently launched with the idea of scanning the Iris of humans as a means of providing proof of personhood.

Note: While there is still some debates on the legality and ethicality of the Worldcoin project vision at the time of writing, this article chooses to remain neutral on that subject.

Another notable recent innovation is the decentralized identity solution powered by the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP).

What is innovative about Internet Identity?

The Internet Identity solution makes it possible for any human to securely authenticate their Internet Identity by linking passkeys to their biometrics or using other unique device identifiers like Bluetooth, YubiKeys, hardware wallets, etc.

How Internet Identity Works on the Internet Computer

The Internet Identity architecture allows for passwordless authentication on dApps (decentralized applications) built on the Internet Computer. This method of passwordless authentication is made possible by the integration of the Web Authentication (WebAuth) framework by linking its API (Application Programming Interface) into websites of dApps built on the Internet Computer.

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Another interesting feature of the Internet Identity is that every time a user signs into a new dApp it generates a unique principal id such that the user’s web interaction cannot easily be tracked across the dApps they use.

Let’s consider the example of Mary to explain this feature better.

Suppose Mary is a user who loves shopping on site A and reading fashion-related blog posts on site B. In all of these websites, anytime she logins, she uses her email address/ID: mary@example.com to login across these sites. Beyond the surface, however, she is unintentionally leaving her email ID details on the server of the hosting providers of both websites, which ultimately can be used to track her across the various platforms she accesses.

How does the Internet Identity solve Mary’s tracking problem?

The internet Identity solves Mary’s problem in that, every time she signs into a new website on the Internet Computer, like an e-commerce website or a fashion blog, a unique principal id is generated for her, making it more difficult to track her online activity across the dApps she uses.

Let’s now have an overview of some key benefits of Internet Identity.

Key Benefits of the Internet Identity

It creates a simplified user authentication method
It enhances user security and privacy
Provides seamless access to decentralized applications

Conclusion

As the population of the human race continues to expand, it is normal to expect more people to likely become more privacy conscious than ever before. While we await that possible future, it may be comforting to know that privacy-preserving solutions like the Internet Identity powered by the Internet Computer could play a crucial role in upholding users’ right to privacy online.

The article series continues. In our next article in the series, we will look into the Internet Computer approach to scalability. Until then, we say thank you for reading. Please feel free to leave your comments in the comments section.

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Disclaimer: The information presented in this piece is merely for educational purposes only, it contains the viewpoint of the author and does not constitute investment advice. Readers are kindly advised to do their research on the subject and are free to disagree with the viewpoints shared by the author here. Thank you.