Blockchain-Based Identity Management (BIMS)

Abstract

Over one billion people worldwide lack a recognised legal identity. Existing identity systems — built around passwords, static biometrics, and centralised authorities — are fragile, exclusionary, and increasingly vulnerable to breach, coercion, and state failure. This paper introduces the Blockchain-Based Identity Management System (BIMS), a decentralised identity framework that replaces static credentials with continuous, behaviour-informed validation. Rather than asking "what do you know or carry?", BIMS asks "does this person's pattern of behaviour, movement, and context match who they say they are?" — mirroring how humans naturally recognise one another. BIMS integrates IoT-derived behavioural signals, privacy-preserving cryptography (zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption), Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), and a leaderless Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus network. Raw personal data never leaves the user's device. Validators receive only mathematical confidence scores. The result is identity verification that is private by architecture, not by policy. Critically, BIMS embeds humanitarian protection at the protocol level. A dedicated governance layer — including NGO and neutral-nation validators with weighted oversight powers — ensures that refugees, stateless persons, and people in crisis can establish and maintain digital identity even when institutions have failed them. The system is designed to be interoperable with existing standards (W3C DIDs/VCs, OAuth/OIDC), scalable via Layer 2 zero-knowledge rollups, and energy-efficient through edge inference. BIMS proposes that privacy, security, and inclusion are not competing priorities — they are mutually reinforcing design goals.