A Blockchain-based Conceptual Framework for Privacy Preserving Self-Sovereign Identity with Selective Disclosure

Abstract

Identity cards have undergone a significant change from simple paper documents designed for single application to smart electronic cards. Various countries use biometric cards, electronic national cards, portable Ids or mobile Ids for identification of an individual to offer various services, particularly in India, different ID cards are utilized for different purposes (E.g., Driving Licence, Aadhar Card, Pan Card, Employee ID Card, etc). All these cards are issued by centralized identity-based frameworks, which give binary identification of an entity, which implies either the entire identity attributes are known or nothing is known. Also, it experiences lack of transparency, identity owner controllability, traceability, security and privacy. With the advancement of blockchain technology, new decentralized and transparent digital identity models are proposed to address these challenges. Self-sovereign identity is the latest evolution in the identity domain which provides complete ownership of data to the identity owner with privacy. Our aim is to explore the potential of blockchain technology for use in the management of self-sovereign identity, where numerous researchers and academicians are keen on setting up an open and decentralized environment. We further investigated the work done by existing specialists in the said domain and based on that we proposed a new blockchain based selfsovereign identity model with smart contract. Our model empowers users (employees, students, customers, etc.) to share information to service providers (employers, universities, banks, etc.) on a need-to-know basis and also allows them to validate that information.