On the Relevance of Blockchain in Identity Management
This work addresses the issue of misguided blockchain adoption for practitioners and researchers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing critiques without introducing a new technological breakthrough.
The authors tackled the problem of overhyped blockchain applications by developing a decision model to evaluate its applicability, focusing on identity management and analyzing projects like uPort, Sovrin, and ShoCard to determine when blockchain is necessary.
The ubiquitous application of emerging blockchain technology in numerous technological projects leads to a tremendous hype. The significantly high prices of digital currencies and initial coin offerings as the new funding approach has fostered the public perception of blockchain as a cure-all and driven the hype even further. In this evolution, a clear view of the reasonable application of blockchain technology is not given and therefore, the purposeful use of traditional technologies is undermined. To clarify this situation, we derive a novel decision model for evaluating the applicability of blockchain technology that considers two key factors: the remediation of central governance and the management of digital objects. Based on these key factors, we closely analyse the domain of identity management for conscious blockchain application. Finally, we examine uPort, Sovrin, and ShoCard as distinct projects in this scope with regard to the inevitable necessity to implement a blockchain by using our decision model.