An extremist new framework for how to validate online identities just went live on the Bitcoin network.
Microsoft’s Decentralized Identity group has recently launched the ION Decentralized Identifier (DID) network on the Bitcoin mainnet. This network is a layer two innovation like Lightning. Aside from that, as opposed to zeroing in on payments. It utilizes Bitcoin’s blockchain to make advanced IDs for confirming identity online.
An ID network like ION could be the way to open a web where users at this point don’t need to mess with passwords, messages and PDAs for verification.
Microsoft’s Daniel Bucnher writes in a blog post, “We are excited to share that [version 1] of ION is complete and has been launched on Bitcoin mainnet. We have deployed an ION node to our production infrastructure and are working together with other companies and organizations to do so as well. ION does not rely on centralized entities, trusted validators or special protocol tokens. ION answers to no one but you, the community,”
As indicated by Buchner, ION is open source. Thus anybody can download the code and run an ION node to utilize the assistance. It’s anything but an open-source convention for decentralized identifiers. It has been created by devs from Microsoft, ConsenSys, Mattr, and Transmute.
Forget Passwords and Usernames
Open to people in general subsequent after being in closed beta since June 2020. ION utilizes a similar rationale as Bitcoin’s transaction layers to approve identity. A public key and its corresponding private key are utilized to check that a user possesses an ID.
For instance, to sign in to your email or online media in a world that utilizes ION, you would check your record by signing your DID with your ION account. Because of the cryptographic connections that ION makes to Bitcoin, the ION network would confirm for the service provider that you own the ID related to your account.
Users can make and deal with various IDs with multiple keys for different services. A portion of these might be utilized repetitively to sign in to services that users access every day. These include email and online media, or could be utilized in one-off manners, for example, confirming show or event tickets.
With variant one launched, the group will zero in on delivering a light version for bootstrapping nodes quicker and smoothing out ID resolution by approving an ID while its connected transaction is as yet in Bitcoin’s mempool.