On Bitcoin's main net, Microsoft has deployed its decentralized identifier project. The four-year-old project aims to make it easier for organizations and individuals to be found on the internet without relying on a third party.
Major Signals
- Microsoft launched its DIDs on bitcoin's mainnet.
- The ION team said that one of it's a in criteria for choosing Bitcoin is because of its very safe blockchain
- This could be a platform where users can check their identities without having to fumble with passwords, addresses, or mobile phones.
- The DIDs are currently being evaluated as a candidate recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium.
On the Bitcoin network, a groundbreaking new system for checking online identities has just gone live. According to its Github repository, it acts as a second-layer solution to support DIDs/DPKI (Decentralized Public Key Infrastructure) at scale, and it's based on Bitcoin's blockchain.
This network is a layer 2 technology similar to Lightning, except it uses Bitcoin's blockchain to establish digital IDs for online identity authentication rather than payments. An ID network like ION may be the secret to opening a platform where users can check their identities without having to fumble with passwords, addresses, or mobile phones.
Daniel Buchner, Microsoft's Senior Product Manager for Decentralized Identity, confirmed the ION's launching.
Each transaction is hashed, allowing ION nodes to categorize, store, process, and retrieve transactions associated with a particular DID.
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) connects the ION network to Bitcoin and eliminates the need for a separate consensus process. “Tens of thousands of transactions per second” can be processed by its nodes. Users who are interested in creating DIDs can do so without using BTC or running an ION node on their own.
On two criteria, the ION team ranks Bitcoin as the most stable blockchain: development of a single, independent, permanent record with no way to reverse it, and low-security cost. The team stated that bitcoin was their first choice because the network is extremely stable, claiming that it is by far the most secure alternative.
Buchner said the solution's protocol is "slanted toward bandwidth and storage" in terms of cost, and that it can accommodate 40 billion DIDs in 2 TB of memory space with a compact node configuration.
The team will concentrate on launching a "simple version" for bootstrapping nodes faster and streamlining ID resolution by approving an ID while its associated transaction is still in the Bitcoin mempool once version 1 is published.
Contributions to Microsoft's ION have come from Bitcoin and crypto heavyweights like Casa, ConsenSys, Gemini, BitPay, and Protocol Labs, as well as Cloudflare, Spruce, and others.
DIDs are currently being evaluated as a candidate recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a body for web standards founded in 1994. This means that the forum is considering recognizing these identity frameworks as an international standard.
