Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Microsoft is developing blockchain tech that lets you manage your digital identity



Microsoft is intent on prove blockchain naysayers wrong. In an endeavor to indicate the potential of the technology on the far side its applications in cryptocurrency, the Redmond large has declared plans to use blockchain technical school because the foundation for storing and process digital identity knowledge.

Following a collaboration with the suburbanised Identity Foundation (DIF), Microsoft has discovered its plans to believe blockchain technology to resolve a number of the challenges we have a tendency to face once managing our identities and private knowledge digitally, like rising privacy and security across the physical and digital world.

“We believe it's essential for people to have and management all components of their digital identity,” the corporate aforementioned in an exceedingly web log post. “Rather than grant broad consent to innumerous apps and services, and have their identity knowledge unfold across various suppliers, people want a secure, encrypted digital hub wherever they will store their identity knowledge and simply management access to that.”

To this finish, the corporate is developing Associate in Nursing off-chain answer – equivalent to the Lightning Network – which will permit it to method huge volumes of ID knowledge while not congesting the blockchain network.

While the corporate has nonetheless to demo operating prototypes of its solutions, it's shared some findings from its conjointly analysis with the DIF. additionally to its uses for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, the Windows-maker concludes that blockchain technical school is well-suited for variety of alternative applications.

A key takeaway is that – rather than looking forward to third-party services and solutions – blockchain might prove instrumental in golf shot management into the hands of the client also as firmly storing personal knowledge.

“Today, users grant broad consent to innumerous apps and services for assortment and retention of their knowledge to be used on the far side their management,” the post reads. “With knowledge breaches and fraud turning into additional subtle and frequent, users want the way to require possession of their identity.”

How it really works
For this reason, the corporate has planned many new services:

Decentralized symbols (DIDs) – a W3C verbal description that defines a standard document format for describing the state of a suburbanised Identifier
Identity Hubs – Associate in Nursing encrypted identity datastore that options message/intent relay, attestation handling, and identity-specific cipher endpoints
Universal DID Resolver – a server that resolves DIDs across blockchains
Verifiable Credentials – a W3C verbal description that defines a document format for coding DID-based attestations
“After examining suburbanised storage systems, accord protocols, blockchains, and a range of rising standards, we have a tendency to believe blockchain technology and protocols square measure similar temperament for sanctionative suburbanised Identifiers (DIDs),” the corporate writes.

According to Microsoft, these solutions “can change developers to realize access to a additional precise set of attestations, whereas reducing legal and compliance risks (such as, GDPR, KYC/AML) by process such data rather than dominant it on behalf of the user.”

The legendary computer code supplier is fast to imply that, whereas blockchains square measure so appropriate for such applications, current solutions like Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Litecoin still lag behind normal centralized alternatives – particularly once it involves matters of speed, convenience and network stability.

“To overcome these technical barriers, we have a tendency to square measure collaborating on suburbanised Layer two protocols that run atop these public blockchains to attain world scale, whereas protective the attributes of a best DID system,” Microsoft says.

The Redmond behemoth says it'll share additional technical details and proof of thought implementations in an exceedingly series of approaching posts.

The suburbanised Identity applications square measure slated to land on the Microsoft appraiser app, that is already employed by several folks to prove their identity.

“With consent, Microsoft appraiser are ready to act as your User Agent to manage identity knowledge and sign attestations,” the web log post explains. “In this style, solely the ID is stock-still on chain. Identity knowledge is keep in Associate in Nursing off-chain, encrypted knowledge store that the user has full management over.”

Microsoft has long shown support for blockchain technical school on variety of occasions.

Indeed, the technology titan was one in all many companies and banks to indicate ambition in developing business applications on the Ethereum network.

More recently, Microsoft was aforementioned to be partnering with the IOTA Foundation over its “next-generation blockchain” answer. The partnership ultimately established to be nothing over an off-the-cuff collaboration between a consumer and a computer code supplier.

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