Majdoor Digital Trust-Ledger (MDTL): A Decentralized Framework for Bridging Informal Labor to Formal Economic Inclusion

Abstract

Millions of informal workers are able to work in the economy without the ability to be subjected to formal fiscal recognition or empirical employment history. The Majdoor Digital Trust-Ledger (MDTL) is a decentralized and privacy-sensitive framework according to which evidence of informal labor is converted into self-sovereign digital assets. MDTL combines Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), Verifiable Credentials (VCs), escrows based on smart contracts, and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) to implement verifiable, but confidential proof-of-work. The system proposes a 5-layer architecture, i.e. Identity, Credential, Ledger, Privacy, and Verification, which is designed to be scalable, interoperable, and it can be run on resource-constrained deployment. MDTL progresses the agency of workers by creating portable and tamper-evident labor records to allow financial inclusion without degrading privacy.