Identity in your hands: the ION project

Digital identity travels on the blockchain, the technology that allows you to create unique and irreproducible, decentralized and anonymous elements. Launched in March, the Microsoft project was the focus of a long interview released in recent days by Daniel Buchner, Senior Product Manager of the Decentralized Identity sector at Microsoft at the Bitcoin Conference 2021 in Miami. “ION doesn’t answer to anyone but you,” Buchner said. A motto that we are rarely used to combining with big tech products. But while Microsoft is at the heart of the project’s development, it has made it clear that it will have no control over the shared data. ION is a layer2 network built on top of Bitcoin, which wants to give people control over all their personal data, without the need for intermediaries for validation. The choice fell on Bitcoin, explained Buchner, because as a support network “it is clearly the safest one, with the highest degree of immutability and with other aspects that we believe are crucial for this type of management”. ION’s goal is to build DIDs, decentralized identifiers, which can function as an anchor point for all internet activity. “Every login button we find ourselves pressing when entering our credentials is a symptom of an illness,” Buchner said, “the need for someone else to validate our identity.” Unlike other centralized identification systems in use today (such as social network usernames, or email addresses), DIDs are generated, owned and controlled by individuals, not by companies or other entities, and therefore it is not possible for the subject third party intervenes with control or removal actions. Through the DID it is the person who manages their data, and is able to try any kind of detail related to their life. You can create various levels of sharing or even different DIDs depending on the purpose – work, knowledge, purchases – by layering the information that can be shared. For example, if the employer asks us for proof of qualifications or publications, we will be able to share with him only the digital proof of what is requested, without the need for third party validation and with a complete and total management of every detail that we will go to. Buchner, who defines himself as a “libertarian”, is keen to emphasize that by leaving the keys to his identity to the individual, there is greater individual control but also greater responsibility for each one in managing and controlling it. “A DID can be lost, just as you can lose Bitcoin that you store on a hard drive that you accidentally throw away.” But, Buchner continues, “there is no loss of identity, the data remains but you have to put it back together with a little effort, in the same way that, if you lose your identity card, you have to go through a bit of bureaucracy to recover it “. ION at the moment is not yet in the test phase, from the Microsoft site it is possible to access the preview called Blue Active Directory Verifiable Credentials.