summary

Companies focusing on decentralized digital identity are focusing heavily on a concept known as self-sovereignty of identity, which is the ability to limit the information you share in situations today where you might be asked for something like your passport, and also limit who has access to the information you do choose to share. If I want to be let into a building and am asked for my ID, I’m answering the question “Who are you?”, when really the only thing I should need to provide is the answer to “Are you allowed to come in”. Self-sovereignty of identity tries to make that distinction clear by decoupling that information. One of the companies working on self sovereign identity (SSI) is Vetri, formerly VALID. Vetri’s model consists of a data wallet and a data marketplace. Essentially, you can selectively reveal your data, therefore creating scarcity in the data market, and you’ll be compensated in VLD tokens. uPort focuses on creating a persistent digital identity that completely represents a person or organization that can make statements about who they are. It can be thought of as the ethereum equivalent of a facebook profile in that you can log into services with it representing your identity. uPort’s app uploads your information to an independent decentralized storage platform and maintains its address on the ethereum blockchain. Lastly, Sovrin’s model is a lot like uPort’s, but they custom built a blockchain specifically for the purpose of identity, which scales a lot better than the current iteration of Ethereum, potentially allowing it to be used on a global scale. Part of Sovrin’s mission is that identity should not be denied to anyone for reasons of cost or accessibility. The key of course to all of these, and what makes decentralized solutions to identity useful, is that nobody should be in control of your identity but you. Next, we’ll be talking about blockchain’s applications in the healthcare industry.