One of my first ideas for a blockchain application (I refuse to add a link to anything blockchain here) came while I was taking a Fintech class at McCombs. My group and I were working on a final project and decided that blockchain was the most interesting application and challenging of the topics we saw.
My contribution to that brainstorming was a complicated and seemingly uninteresting application for identity. In short, I believe the blockchain is great for use cases for trusted transactions in a trust-less environment. Sending and receiving money pseudonymously or anonymously is great. But many times that we need to identify (with proofs) the parties transacting. For example, an election system. Associating a transaction to an entity has become a soft of holy grail in the blockchain world.
My solution involved a federated network of entities that can vouch for a single entity without revealing actual information from the entity, but only the proof. After all, there are many institutions that are legally obligated. We have IDs, passports, driver licenses, social security numbers, bank accounts. These are all ways we can identify ourselves. But how we determine who are authorized to give identity information? Who do we really trust to do that? Do our records define it?
What is identity really? Our group moved in a different direction, but it was not the last time I worked on this issue.
