Blockchain for Real World Applications

6 Identity as a Panacea for the Real World

Identity entitles a person to exercise his rights and responsibilities fairly and equitably in a civilized society. It provides access to education, health care, business activities, pensions, banking, social benefits, and welfare schemes of the state. Through enrollment, accurate population figures are available to the government for meticulous planning and policy preparations.

The use of paper documents to establish identity of users is cumbersome and involves a high risk of data loss. In comparison, advanced electronic capture and storage of data has been found to reduce costs as well as human error and increase administrative efficiency (World Bank, 2020). The core idea in a citizen’s digital registration and identification system is to link a randomly generated unique identification number with the identity while keeping all relevant details in a secure and distributed database.

However, it is extremely difficult to register the population and reach all across various physical and geographical barriers. Consequently, over one thousand million people, including 21 million refugees, still do not have access to an authorized identity, presumably due to exorbitant fees, indirect costs, intermediaries, and complex procedures.

6.1 Identity Systems

All over the world, residents have several forms of identity documents for specific purposes, such as a voter card for election purposes, a driver’s license, a passport for traveling abroad, ...