Cross-Border Digital Identity System Based on Ethereum Layer 2 Architecture

Abstract

Modern passport systems face significant challenges in secure data sharing, real-time verification, and user-controlled authorization, particularly in cross-border scenarios. Existing digital passport solutions, often built on permissioned blockchains, suffer from limited transparency, scalability, and high operational costs. This paper proposes a decentralized passport management system based on an Ethereum Layer 2 architecture that combines global governance with high-throughput and cost-efficient passport operations. The system adopts a hybrid design in which a Global Passport Registry smart contract is deployed on the Ethereum mainnet for cross-country coordination, while passport issuance, access control, and identity management are handled on Layer 2 networks through country-operated Passport Managers and user-specific Personal Passport smart contracts. Extensive performance evaluations show that Ethereum Layer 1 throughput saturates at approximately 40–50 transactions per second (TPS), whereas the proposed Layer 2 deployment consistently exceeds 150 TPS and reaches up to 300 TPS under higher-performance environments, significantly surpassing the estimated system requirement of 70 TPS. These improvements result in faster response times, reduced congestion, and substantially lower transaction costs, demonstrating that public Ethereum Layer 2 infrastructures can effectively support a scalable, self-sovereign, privacy-preserving, and globally verifiable digital passport system suitable for real-world deployment.