Nov 15, 2017
First official registration of a Zug citizen on Ethereum
On November 15, 2017, the first digital Zug ID will officially be registered on the Ethereum blockchain in front of a live press audience.
Over the summer we announced our partnership with the city of Zug, as we launched a pilot program to register residents’ IDs on the blockchain to unlock access to government eServices like online voting and proof of residency.
Since June, we have been improving the Uport platform and working with our Swiss partners at ti&m to prepare the city for an official launch. This launch is today. This major milestone demonstrates the power of Ethereum such that a city government can issue to its citizens a digital verification of their citizenship.
Not only does digital citizenship enable more trust between citizens and government agencies, but it also opens up new and significant opportunities for improved digital interactions between people and governments. For Zug, there are plans to offer an e-Voting initiative in Spring 2018. These are very exciting times.
Now, let’s look at what will happen during Zug’s first official ID registration.
1. After downloading the Uport mobile app, a Zug citizen registers their Uport ID on the Ethereum blockchain. This globally unique identifier is the public address of a smart contract known as a Uport Proxy Contract.
2. Using their newly registered Uport ID, the citizen signs-in to the Zug ID web portal by scanning a QR code.
3. After authenticating into the Zug web portal, the citizen enters their personal information and preexisting Zug ID number. Since the citizen’s personal information is submitted from their still-unverified Uport ID, this submission requires in-person verification by a city administrator.
4. After registering, the citizen has 14 days to visit the Zug records office in person with one of their official government ID documents.
5. In the records office, the Zug official signs into the Zug admin portal using their Uport ID. This enables the official to review the citizen’s submissions by cross checking the information they provided against their documents in-person, and if approved, issue a digital citizenship credential to their Uport ID. This credential represents a digital attestation from Zug, to the citizen, claiming their active citizenship.
Here’s a video demonstrating how the verification process works for both citizens and admins.
This is an exciting time for the Ethereum community as we’re beginning to see real world use cases emerge for the things we’ve been hard at work building over the last two years. At Uport, we constantly strive to improve the usability of Ethereum to make blockchain ID accessible to everyone regardless of technical know-how.
Our partnership with Zug is one giant step towards our goal of realizing a global self-sovereign identity system, and we couldn’t be more excited to see the first identity officially registered today.
