Distributed-Ledger-based Authentication with Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials
This work addresses privacy and security issues in digital authentication for end users, offering a decentralized alternative to centralized identity systems.
The paper tackles the problems of inconvenient authentication and centralized control over digital identities by implementing a decentralized OpenID Connect Provider using Self-Sovereign Identity, enabling users to choose from a large pool of identity providers instead of a few corporations, and proposes a verifiable credential-based decentralized Public Key Infrastructure using distributed ledger technologies for straightforward certificate retrieval.
Authentication with username and password is becoming an inconvenient process for the user. End users typically have little control over their personal privacy, and data breaches effecting millions of users have already happened several times. We have implemented a proof of concept decentralized OpenID Connect Provider by marrying it with Self-Sovereign Identity, which gives users the freedom to choose from a very large pool of identity providers instead of just a select few corporations, thus enabling the democratization of the highly centralized digital identity landscape. Furthermore, we propose a verifiable credential powered decentralized Public Key Infrastructure using distributed ledger technologies, which creates a straightforward and verifiable way for retrieving digital certificates.