Blockchain Research Beyond Cryptocurrencies

Abstract

One of the key requirements of a properly functioning digital society is the implementation of a decentralized identity management scheme through which the identity of every citizen can be uniquely determined. Specifically, we believe what is required is for a PKI to be deployed at a global scale. A PKI consists of a collection of digital certificates that cryptographically bind an individual's identity to their public key. In this article, we present an overview of our recent work in the areas of identity management and privacy, with specific emphasis on the deployment of a blockchain backed PKI. Once a PKI is in place, we are in a position to perform a number of common network tasks much more securely and efficiently than we can do currently.