uPort Rationalizing Users’ Digital Identities

uPort, one of the oldest projects launched under the Ethereum umbrella and incubated with ConsenSys, is being regarded as one of the most exciting projects that is focused on rationalizing internet users’ digital identities.

Creating an Identity Layer in the Internet

The recent privacy scandals at Yahoo!, Facebook and Equifax have emphasized the fact that is so easy for advertisers, hackers as well as machine learning algorithms to access internet users’ data.

uPort, on the other hand, is looking at the bigger picture. Instead of looking at monetizing data (which is what the majoring of Blockchain based startups are focusing on), the project is exploring how it can protect a users’ entire digital identity. According to Reuven Heck, the project lead as well as co-founder of uPort, the internet needs to be rebuilt at a deeper level than just the superficial top layer of apps.

uPort’s head of strategy and operations, Danny Zuckerman reveals that the project was created in response to the need from the Ethereum community to build a decentralized identity system.

Zuckerman went on to explain what the company means by an “identity layer”. He gave the example of the traditional world, where the government gives people “identities” such as passport numbers, national ID numbers, Social Security numbers or a driver’s license number. In contrast to this, he said, the internet has all kinds of identity systems based on the user names and passwords generated when they log into different sites or apps. This has led to users’ data being captured in multiple places on the internet – and being completely out of users’ control.

Self-Sovereign Identity

And this is where, according to Zuckerman, uPort steps in. The project’s aim is to give users charge of holding their own data, and – if they so choose – share the data linked to their online identity. And it plans to do this by using the same cryptographic protocol that allows users to control their own cryptocurrency without the intervention of a third party. This goal is what the company calls Self-Sovereign Identity.

The Race to Develop Self-Sovereign Identity

uPort however is not the only project that is working towards developing a self-sovereign identity protocol based on Blockchain technology. The Sovrin Foundation, which has launched Project Indy, which is working on a similar project.

Another competitor is Civic, which is planning to roll out its version of an identity platform later this year. Microsoft and Accenture are not far behind with their versions of this kind of a protocol. Even developers at Ethereum are working on a tokenized identity protocol.

These developers are aware of the danger of having fragmented identity systems that exist in siloes and so are looking at creating interoperability between these different platform