Decentralised Digital Identity and Verifiable Credential Tracking and Management System

Abstract

Digital identity has rapidly gained interest as organisations strive toward digital transformation. However, the lack of adequate digital identity management mechanisms has become a major concern. Consequently, decentralised digital identities are increasingly being used as a form of credentialing. This requires secure, reliable, scalable and privacy-preserving credential issuance and verification mechanisms to prove the legitimacy of the credential. On the other hand, most existing systems provide centralised solutions that primarily rely on third parties. Meanwhile, these systems do not allow end-users to own, control, and share their credentials with relevant parties. This paper proposes a secure and reliable de centralised digital identity, verifiable credential tracking, and management system. The proposed system guarantees the authenticity and integrity of the user credentials and allows users to selectively share a subset of their verifiable credentials with relevant stakeholders through the model known as self-sovereign identity (SSI). SSI facilitates end users to have sole ownership over the ability to control their accounts and personal data. To achieve the objectives of the study, the proposed system adopts the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs), Verifiable Credentials (VCs), and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs). The system outperforms competitors in terms of both storage and speed and, thus, delivers exceptional efficiency and interoperability.