Profiling the Elevatyr Core 12: Ethereum Dapps
Visit https://www.elevatyr.io/ to sign up for the closed beta waitlist, and to learn more about how Elevatyr is the simplest way to intelligently trade cryptocurrencies.
First we looked at Ethereum, and the true power of the platform. Then we examined Ethereum Classic, and revisited the reasoning and debate surrounding the near-twins. Now, we turn our attention to Dapps, the decentralized applications built on the Ethereum blockchain that are aiming to change the world for the better.
Tokenized projects on Ethereum are known as ERC-20 tokens. The ERC-20 designation lets users know the corresponding service runs on the Ethereum blockchain and that the token of conversation can be stored on any wallet that is compatible with ERC-20 format.
Even though large market cap protocols will be used as the building blocks of this digital ecosystem, the decentralized applications running on them will be where the majority of people interact with blockchain technology, without even knowing it.
In this article we’ll be taking a look at one of the most user friendly and potentially useful decentralized applications.
U-Port
This application is focused on harnessing blockchain technology’s unique ability to create an immutable digital identity. The possible applications of digital identity verification are extremely wide ranging.
What separates Uport from other digital identity services is that they have a working product and are the first step in making the Ethereum ecosystem approachable for everyday people.
How it Works
Blockchain’s use of cryptography created an inherent degree of anonymity for users of the network, though to be clear many blockchains do not fully — nor do they attempt to — obscure the identity of its users. With most, only a public key, or address, can be used to tie a transaction or account to a specific user, falling short of automatically revealing their name and true identity.
The basic blockchain (also known as blockchain 1.0), like the one powering bitcoin, has obvious flaws such as difficulty recovering a private key, a lack of custody of information, and the inability to transfer an identity or any of its features.
The Uport team uses layers of Ethereum smart contracts to solve these challenges.
Identity Recovery
Let’s begin with the biggest issue, recovering a lost private key. With Uport, verification is specified to physical locations, and a user’s private key for their account is actually linked to a copy of their identity. If a key is lost the user can go to a physical location and use their normal identification to recover their digital profile.
This is a key separator between Uport and other blockchain based identity services, or almost any blockchain service for that matter. The ability to easily recover access to an identity by visiting a physical location is a key factor in making this product approachable to the average person, as people often prefer to handle matters of security directly.
Custody of Information
Custody of information is a huge topic of controversy in tech world, and is where Uport makes its next stride. While giant corporations like Facebook and Apple leverage a person’s information to create a digital profiles that can then be used for sales purposes, Uport empowers its users to maintain ownership of their personal information.
In a blockchain 1.0 identity solution, all of your information would need to be kept in one place, so that a program could easily connect your private key to your public key to your identity and info. While narrowly effective in achieving its purpose, this solution does not maintain the decentralization core to blockchain’s philosophy.
Uport’s custodial architecture is similar to that of non-custodial decentralized exchanges. Smart contracts allow users to be in custody of all of their information, off-chain on their devices. In this way each person is responsible for their own info in case of an attack, and the dangers of significant losses of personal information are greatly reduced.
There are a number of illustrative examples from recent history of the importance of such a service, but perhaps the best of them would be the 2013 Yahoo hack. Yahoo was hacked for all 3 billion of its users’ names, phone numbers, email address, dates of birth, and security questions and answers, in part because Yahoo kept all of its user information on a centralized database.
Had their users data been partitioned into a decentralized, encrypted, and scattered storage system, the effects of the hack would have been markedly lessened. Executing such an attack on Uport would be essentially impossible. It would require breaching not one point of weakness, but numerous, perhaps millions, depending on the number of nodes in the storage network.
That’s the power of decentralization. You can be in control of all your information, as well as who gets to see, use, and keep it.
Smart Contract Capabilities
Uport solves the issue for transferring identity features, but this is part of a larger solution. The keys to the system lie in Ethereum smart contracts that form the framework and a little object oriented programming that coordinates the process.
For those of you who are not computer engineers, object oriented programming is writing code to create a digital object, to which you can assign common features for all instances of the object.
For example, if the object I made was a car, it might have features like license plate number, height, width, and number of seats. With an Ethereum smart contract, a system can be created where only cars with specific license plate numbers (an identifier) can enter a garage.
In the case of Uport, the object in question is you. Your identity includes a name, birth date, social security number, bank pin, etc. In a similar situation, you could write a contract for your home security system that only lets in people whose names are registered under your home object.
Smart contracts allow you to make applications of blockchain like this and trust that the programmed actions will always carry out.
Switzerland
In the first public use of the test network, Uport worked with the city government of Zug, Switzerland to set up digital identities for citizens of the city and let them use their digital identities to access various government services that require identification.
Citizens began by downloading an app and creating an account. Then they scanned a QR code to interact with the object that is “the city” on the blockchain; we’ll call that object Zug. Zug is managed by the city clerk who uses his Uport ID to sign in and has the ability to verify and sign information.
Citizens entered their birthday and passport number into the cities website. Once Zug verified that the information sent wass from one of their citizens, that person visited the registration office to become verified by Zug.
Once verified by Zug, other users of the application were able to hold full confidence that person was who they claimed to be and their information could be trusted. Imagine a world where the other side of every transaction you complete, from buying groceries to purchasing a used car, could be completely trusted and verified. This is the world Uport is working to build.
Future Use Cases
Although the development of Uport will go on for years fixing bugs and adding features, there is already a safe, easy to use app where you can create a complete digital representation of a person or organization.
Easy to digest ideas like home security were used as examples, but the applications of this are endless. This technology has a place being a part of voting, census info, taxes, or anything that requires the transfer of personal or sensitive information.
The future is bring for Uport, dapps, and blockchain.
Ethereum can be traded on select cryptocurrency exchanges, and will be available for trading via Elevatyr, which will be entering an early access period in July. Visit https://www.elevatyr.io/ to sign up for the closed beta waitlist, and to learn more about how Elevatyr is the simplest way to intelligently trade cryptocurrencies.
For those interested in learning more about Ethereum, you may visit Ethereum’s website at https://ethereum.org/
Disclosure: This article does not represent an endorsement of the Ethereum cryptocurrency as an investment, and is for informational purposes only. Trading decisions should be made on an individual basis, and be informed by independent research. Elevatyr makes no recommendation as to trading behavior that should or should not be taken. The author of this article owns a small stake of Ethereum cryptocurrency.
