Prism / Universal Digital ID Development Priority?

English General Discussions
1

Does anyone else see the immediate need for a Universal Digital ID that can be used across the spectrum of incoming Dapps integrating with the Cardano blockchain?

I’m not even sure if there is a accepted acronym for a Universal Digital ID, for simplicity I’ll refer to it as a UniDID.

It makes no sense for every Dapp requiring a Digital Id to create their own user login/password system, yet alone store and access information that could reside under a single UniDID.

The Atala Prism 2nd layer solution seems to be where IOG’s effort has been focused, and appears to me to be the the most likely candidate for a UniDID solution. A trustable and verifiable UniDID will most likely be required for any individual, institution, business or group, basically any entity engaging with the Cardano network or any blockchain network for that matter.

At this point, there is very little information regarding Atala Prism development which appears to be focused primarily as a credential verification Dapp. I think most can see Prism can be so much more.

I’m curious if the Cardano Foundation is involved with IOG in the development of the UniDID protocol/roadmap that Prism could evolve into. Is a UniDID whitepaper even available?

Since a UniDID would contain a wide variety of data, it seems a universal layered series of restrictive api’s/protocols would have to be developed to access the requested data. It seems to me the Cardano Foundation should be central in the development of a UniDID protocol. Is the discussion on the radar and if it is, is it accessible?

Creating a UniDID for an entity so the data contained in the UniDID is accessible appears to be within reach. Verifying that a UniDID properly represents the legitimate owner to others is more problematic. I am interested in possible solutions to create or tag verifiable UniDID’s.

Last night (2/26/21) I watched Charle’s Surprise AMA video. At one point he was talking about imposters posting comments on Twitter and YouTube and the fact that these companies refuse to do anything to prevent it from happening. In the future, a verifiable UniDID would be a solution to prevent this.

Would a UniDID attached to a NFT prevent fraudulent NFT’s from being involved in transactions?

The issue that immediately arises is how to efficiently and effectively verify a UniDID represents a legitimate entity and is not a fraud/imposter at the initiation of the UniDID. There could literally be billions of unique UniDID’s worldwide. The ability to differentiate between legitimate and fraudulent UniDID’s would have many applications.

I admit, I may be way off base that there is a need for a UniDID Protocol. Let me know what you think, should this development be a priority or not.

2

I think that there merit to a universal ID. If it can have an arbitrary number of properties set by the user and some authority, I think it will be excellent. Otherwise I’d say that it would only really be useful for age and maybe name? If I was going to implement an ID, I would also want it to only give information that was either authorized by the same authority that verified the ID to begin with or by the user. For example, if I went to a hypothetical bar with my ID, I would want to be able to verify that I was over 21 without revealing my name or even my specific age. It would have to be done in a ay that still ensured privacy, since anyone can read the chain.

So long as it’s done properly, I think that it should be a priority, but imo it HAS to be modular in some way. It HAS to be able to accomodate different use cases to really be used unversally, and I think that will be difficult enough on its own, even if not accounting for privacy issues.

3

@Dubius,
I agree, modular and encrypted UniDID’s would be required properties of the project as well the ability to modify some fields of information/data.

The primary reasons a UniDID would have to be implemented by the Cardano Foundation would be data security and data access approval enabled through the Daedalus Wallets, both desktop and the upcoming mobile app.

I would imagine an entities UniDID would be stored on the chain in a catalog of encrypted JSON files where the encryption key would be spending password. I believe it would be most efficient and economical to use a catalog of encrypted JSON files to represent a UniDID so a single file of the catalog could be modified or downloaded without having to upload or download the entire UniDID each time it is accessed.

Each JSON file would hold a Dictionary Array where the keys, this requires a standardized format, would reference either values or other embedded Dictionary Arrays containing more Key/Value data. The number of Arrays and the associated data would be easily expandable, accommodating any information the entity would like to store in their UniDID. It could even handle “custom” key references defined by the user.

Here is an example of how I see a Dapp working with the Daedalus Wallet.

The user opens a Dapp on their mobile device.

The Dapp knows the data is needs approved access to from the user, so it initiates an API call to the Daedalus app requesting the required data.

The UniDID Approval Screen of the Daedalus Wallet opens and displays the labels/keys of the data being requested from the Dapp and asks for approval to send this data back to the Dapp. This could be a simple Username/Password approval or a complex medical record.

When the “Approve” button on the Daedalus Wallet is selected, it sends the data back to the Dapp for it to use or display and the UniDID approval screen slides off screen. The Dapp would now be displayed loaded with the data.

I can see a Transaction Approval Screen would also be a nice seamless method to facilitate sending/receiving tokens and amount values between the Daedalus Wallet and Dapps.

4

With the amount of data flowing from a system like that, I wonder if it would need to be a sidechain. I’ve never really understood storage scaling in blockchain.

5

There is very limited information regarding Prism, I am assuming it is storing the data on chain. Again, this is not a potential Catalyst project, it seems to me it must be integrated into the Daedalus Wallet. This way, your spending password never has to be entered into a Dapp for any purpose. The UniDID screen could even display a personal phrase so user’s would be confident that they are looking at the approved Daedalus UniDID screen and not a fraudulent screen produced from the Dapp similar to what happened when users recently downloaded the fraudulent mobile app from the Google Play Store.