Trends in Electronic IDs and eIDs Integration with Consensus AI Network

Electronic IDs: facts and trends

→ Estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide (25% of the world population) cannot officially prove their identity, according to the 2017 update of the World Bank’s Identification for Development Global Dataset

→ There are now over 60 countries implementing eID cards — in Asia (China, Malaysia, Indonesia), Africa (Republic of South Africa, Nigeria, and Algeria), large parts of Europe, the Gulf, and parts of Latin America. We expect that in 3 to 5 years the way the soсieties operate will be very different with eIDs being used to access online services offered by organizations such as universities, healthcare providers, financial sector companies and many others.

→ Some countries have already issued eIDs and they are widely used for services:

• 99% of Indians aged 18 and above had been enrolled in Aadhaar
• 98% of Estonians irrespective of their location have state issued digital identity
• Over 50 million eID cards had been issued in Germany
• Initiated in 2003, Belgian eID program has reached 100% of its population targets at the end of 2011

→ According to Acuity Market Intelligence, about 3.6 billion people across the world will carry a national eID card by 2021.

→ By the end of 2018 all public services in the European Union are obliged to accept the eIDs of other member states under the eIDAS regulation. The ultimate goal is to offer the possibility to EU citizens to use their national eID in other EU countries when accessing public and private services online.

How countries use their national eIDs:

In 2017 the Netherlands, Germany and Austria have successfully connected their electronic identification and authentication infrastructure, making cross-border use of the eID cards possible to access online public services in these countries such as agricultural portal, handling traffic fines and other services delivered by municipalities.

Estonia still remains the most progressive country in terms of using eID. Developed more than 15 years ago, the Estonian eID card system is one of the most advanced in the world and is used for all of the digital services available in the country.

Estonian eID is used as proof of identification for logging into bank accounts, for digital signatures, online voting, accessing government databases to check medical records, filing taxes and picking up e-prescriptions. The majority of the Estonian population uses the eID card with over 98% of bank transactions, pharmacy prescriptions and tax declarations being done online.

This advanced eID card system also enabled Estonia to launch its e-Residency program, allowing non-citizens to establish and manage a location-independent EU business online from anywhere in the world, apply for a business bank account, digitally sign and transmit documents and declare Estonian taxes online.

Here some examples of practical use of Estonian eID:

→ National Driver’s License
Estonia is the first country to rely on the eID card for checking a driver’s permit and related status information. Police cars are equipped with an eID reader and a mobile workstation enabling easy and fast access to the corresponding databases.

→ E-Health and e-Prescription
The eID serves authorized users to access centrally stored health insurance files and medical records. The whole process of issuing a prescription by a doctor, ordering medicine by the pharmacy, pick up by the patient and reimbursement by the insurance has become completely paperless.

→ Documents Signing
Digital documents can be signed electronically with locally installed DigiDoc signing software or online via DigiDoc portal.

→ e-Voting
Estonia was the first country in the world to conduct national elections over the Internet in 2007. Estonians can cast their votes electronically via the Internet. This is not only convenient for voters, but also reduces the administrative burden and financial overhead for collecting and counting the votes. A sophisticated system not only ensures the legitimacy and privacy of voters, but also the accurate and unbiased running and counting of polls.

→ Loyalty
The eID card is used widely in all sorts of loyalty and discount schemes from supermarkets to gas stations.

X-Road and private sector

For security reasons user data is not stored in one place. Instead, the government data exchange platform X-Road integrates multiple databases through end-to-end encryption. In other words, the ministry of health stores the data on their servers, while banks store the data on theirs and schools on their own. If necessary, the data could be simply transferred from individual nodes.

Although X-Road was a government initiative, many private companies are developing their products based on it. For example, using e-Ambulance application integrated with X-Road, ambulance service doctors can get access to the patient electronic medical record on the way to the patient. If the patient needs to be taken to the hospital for treatment doctors can fill in all the necessary documents using e-Ambulance application on the way to the hospital, so the relevant specialists will be ready by the time the patient arrives. E-Ambulance also helps establish operational flows and processes in the hospitals. The doctors use it, for example, to schedule surgeries — indicating dates, the necessary equipment, required personnel etc.

Recently, Finland has adopted the X-Road platform and now prescription drugs can be picked up in any pharmacy located both in Estonia and Finland.

How Consensus network will use eIDs

The initial release of the platform will be developed and launched in Estonia. Initially, over 30,000 Estonian e-Residents will be able to join the network. Later the eIDs of other countries will be integrated. The eID integration will be used for:

Communities and voting mechanism

As part of the roadmap we will build public and private digital communities on our network and give them an opportunity to influence the decisions made by the city, region or even their favourite brand. Members verified through national eIDs will be able to join the communities of relevant cities and countries.

Community members will be able to vote for a budget allocation items, give feedback to initiatives submitted by the government of a region/city or to influence, where applicable, the choice of a contractor for projects, track the execution and provide feedback on results.

Verification of nodes and smart contract transactions

Within the scope of the project users will get a wallet with eID integration. The smart contracts will be signed by the holders of the eIDs, creating the additional level of security and trust between the parties.

Authenticated users will be be able to run trusted nodes and unidentified will be able to run regular nodes. Trusted nodes will have access to an extended set of functionality, will earn greater mining and verification rewards and will have access to future services and features of the network, which will allow them to participate in the decision making and AI training. Regular unidentified nodes can also be participants of our network, they we will be able to perform basic mining, provide AI with the computing power and earn low tier rewards.

Network governance

The Consensus Network itself will be governed collectively. Nodes will be able to make proposals and vote on any changes to the mining process, rewards allocation, provision of data and computer power to the AI engine etc. eID verification will prevent a person from creating multiple wallets and voting several times. Previously, there were a number of attempts to approximate the one person one vote mechanism, but the introduction of the electronic IDs will solve this issue.

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