$\mathsf {DisIMS}$ DisIMS: A Distributed Identity Management System via Blockchain

Abstract

The increasing incidents of data breaches and personal data misuse highlight the urgent need for robust identity management systems. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) emerges as the future solution for digital identity management, underpinned by anonymous credentials (AC) and the distributed ledger technology (DLT) for security measures. However, current SSI models only achieve partial decentralization and none of them can fully meet the complex security requirements of real-world applications. In this paper, we address these limitations by constructing a Decentralized Anonymous Credential (DAC) scheme inspired by large universe attribute-based cryptographic primitives. Building on this foundation, we design a distributed identity management system (DisIMS), a comprehensive SSI system built on blockchain, achieving attribute flexibility, anonymity, unlinkability, revocability and selective disclosure. Compared to earlier blockchain-based identity management systems, our DisIMS allows users to selectively link previous transactions to generate verifiable eligibility proofs for the current transaction without leaking their real identities. We also implement DisIMS on both permissioned (Hyperledger Fabric v2.5) and permissionless (Ethereum Sepolia testnet) blockchains. Experimental results show that batch verification outperforms single verification by reducing execution times by approximately 76% to 81% on Hyperledger Fabric and 50% to 71% on Ethereum, based on 200 tests with 10 to 50 credentials containing 50 attributes each, which demonstrates DisIMS practicality for real-world batch verification scenarios.