Corporate Digital Identity Based on Blockchain

Abstract

Digital Identity refers to the set of information that defines an entity, generally a person, which can be presented to other entities of digital world. This information represents different information such as skills, biological, activities and other data that may result useful. There are currently several projects developing digital identity systems for personal use and aiming to standardize its use among the population. Digital Identity finds in blockchain the support technology to enable this decentralized management in a secure and reliable way. Blockchain allows citizens identification to each application, contract or business, by providing only the information requested, and avoiding unnecessarily exposing of other private information about citizens. However, there are no digital identity systems for legal entities. Currently, the digital identity concept for business and corporations is limited to its appearance in the digital environment and their corporate image on internet. The objective of this work is the proposal and development of a digital identity for legal entities based on a blockchain network. The methodology is based on applying the same idea of personal digital identity. In addition, the proposal considers Ethereum blockchain since it is strongly accepted for the deployment of smart contracts. As a result, the proposed corporate digital identity provides companies the control of the information they share with government, people and other companies. In addition, the relationships between entities can be defined, and eventually automate, through smart contracts in the blockchain. The main limitation of this idea is the technology adoption by institutions and public administrations in order to normalizing digital relations between all agent involved: corporates, citizens and administrations.