Software giant Microsoft said it sees
possibilities for public blockchains to support decentralized identities and will explore the possibilities within its Microsoft Authenticator application.
In a blog post published on February 12, Microsoft's identity division retracted its belief that Blockchain technology is the right solution to store, maintain, protect and distribute user identification information in a decentralized and tested environment. of manipulations.
Ankur Patel, of the Identity Division of Microsoft, stated in his publication: "Some public block chains (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, to name a few) provide a solid foundation for rooting DIDs, registering DPKI operations and annotating testimonials."
That said, the company admitted that scaling up is a key obstacle before decentralized ID authentication can be available to millions of users simultaneously. As such, they explained that they now take into account the development of additional layers to reach the scale goal.
"To overcome these technical barriers, we are collaborating on the decentralized layer two protocols that run on these public block chains to achieve a global scale, while preserving the attributes of a world-class DID system," Patel wrote.
For now, the firm will "experiment" with decentralized identities by adding support for them in its Microsoft Authenticator application, which is already used by millions of users around the world.
In what could be seen as an excavation on Facebook, which is widely and controversially used on the Internet to access different services and sites, the publication said:
"Instead of granting broad consent to countless applications and services, and having their identity data distributed among numerous providers, people need a secure encrypted digital hub where they can store their identity data and easily control access to them."
The announcement comes less than a month after the alliance between Microsoft and Blockchain Hyperledger joined the UN's ID2020 project, which aims to achieve a secure and verifiable digital identification system that can scale.
As reported, Microsoft donated $ 1 million to the ID2020 initiative during the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.