A User-manageable Credential System based on Blockchain

Abstract

Credentials are one of the most important things to prove oneself in modern society. As the world goes digital, credentials change its form from paper to digital. However, digital data are easy to be forged and to be duplicated. To make digital data secure, cryptographic digital signature is the key technology ensuring its authenticity and integrity. And it is an inevitable choice for secure credential management systems. Recently blockchain has been raised as another key technology to guarantee data transparency. It is a decentralized and public ledger of transactions that anyone can participate and execute programs called smart contract. In this paper, we propose a credential management system based on Ethereum blockchain. This system provides users with a means both to manage their credentials by themselves and to prove their credentials without the issuer. We implemented its prototype on Ethereum, and analyzed the proposed system compared to previous systems.