Identity as a Digital Asset: Tokenizing the Self

Decentralized technologies, including blockchain, provide a secure foundation for building identity solutions that are not only secure but also provide users with the ability to control access to their personal information. Additionally, these identity solutions can be harnessed to offer proof of identity to the large number of people worldwide who lack access to identity and cannot fully participate in the broader, evolving digital economy. 

This Javelin Strategy & Research report looks at how the framework is shaping up to support decentralized identities, the problems the management of decentralized identities can help solve, and some of the entities doing the work to build solutions for such identities. The centralized system for establishing and managing identity has inertia but is insufficient for the needs of a fully digital economy, in large part because it overshares data and creates risk for companies that store personally identifiable information. A decentralized identity system would go a long way toward easing those issues. 

Key questions discussed in this report:

• How can decentralized technologies be used to create a secure identity framework? 
• What problems does decentralized identity address? 
• Which technology providers are building solutions for decentralized identity?

Companies Mentioned:

Accenture, ConsenSys, EY, Hyperledger, IBM, ID2020, Infosys, IOTA, Microsoft, Sovrin Foundation, Veramo, Wipro, World Bank, World Economic Forum, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)