Hello, we are Team Protocon.
Today, we are going to talk about the DID model following the last episode, Voting Model.
Have you heard of “vaccination passports” or “electronic vaccination certificates”?
Due to COVID-19 Pandemic, many parts of daily life have changed, and new systems have emerged.
Vaccine passports and electronic vaccination certificates with DID are the examples of the change, and in order to go abroad without quarantine, not only passports but also vaccination passports proving that the person is not infected by COVID-19 and whether the person has been vaccinated. As such, COVID-19 accelerated non-face-to-face and digitalization throughout society and served as a catalyst for further activation of online-oriented society, not offline. Against this backdrop, people naturally began to recognize the importance of identification that could prove themselves online and to pay attention to DID technology that could prevent risks such as identity forgery or cloning.
Hashnet defines distributed or decentralized identity (DID) as a technology that, unlike traditional identity methods, is not controlled by a central system and allows individuals to have complete control of their information. DID has scalability that can be applied not only in reality but also in online environments. This means as if you can prove your identity by taking out your identity card, you can do the same by submitting a DID that is recorded on the blockchain online.
Authentication by a ‘Trusted Third Party’ is essential to prove identity information in an Internet environment where risk of forgery is high. For this reason, it also requires a certified accredited certificate that proves that you are the owner of the account while in financial transactions online. However, if important personal information is managed by a third party, the possibility of information leakage due to external hacking cannot be ruled out.
However, if you use a blockchain-based DID,
1) It cannot be falsified since it is recorded in the distributed ledger.
2) It is highly secure because personal information is encrypted and stored on a smartphone or personal device.
3) Individuals can take control of their information and manage it transparently.
4) Only necessary information can be selected and used for verification without unnecessary privacy disclosure.
According to the identification concept chart of Telecommunications Technology Association in Korea, DID is used in an environment involving four parties: issuer, holder, verifier, and verifiable data registry.
- Issuers issue verifiable credentials (e.g., passwords) for specific users, i.e., identity holders.
- Owner shall provide issued credentials to verifiers and use services, etc.
- The verifier verifies the owner’s credentials.
- Verifiable data registry primarily uses distributed ledger (blockchain) as a mechanism for storing DIDs, but other types of distributed storage may also be used.
Research And Markets, a global market research firm, predicts that the global DID market will grow from $7.6 billion in 2020 to $15.8 billion in 2025. DID technology is already used in various countries abroad, and a typical example is Estonia, which introduced blockchain-based digital ID card service for the first time.
E-Identity uses its ID card and Mobile-ID to verify identity and provide digital signatures. In the UK, you can digitally identify yourself with the blockchain mobile ID, YOTI, to buy cigarettes or lotto at convenience stores or to sign real estate contracts online.
There are many attempts to use DID in Korea. SK Telecom and Samsung Electronics have collaborated to apply blockchain-based mobile electronic authentication service ‘initial’ to mobile devices. The ‘initial’ can issue certificates directly to the electronic device using DID and store various certificates and submit it to the receiving institution to verify the forgery, alteration, and authenticity.
In January this year, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Ministry of Personnel Management announced that they would run the ‘Mobile Civil Service Card’ in earnest as ‘A test stage for the introduction of mobile identification cards for the entire nation’. Currently, after completing issuance to 15,000 people from 26 organizations in Sejong and Seoul, and going through technical supplementation and verification, mobile driver’s licenses are expected to be serviced to the entire nation at the end of 2021. Through these attempts to incorporate DID into real life, DID is expected to work more closely in full-scale.
The DID model of the Protocon Network provides global user ID, authentication services. The DID model, which will be applied to blockchain, is expected to be used for confirming data as well as a tool for digital identity authentication in conjunction with all dApps. Details related to the DID model will be added in White Paper 1.0 later, so please look forward to it.
In the next episode, we will dig into Fee Model and FeeFi.
