BlockID stores each user’s identity information in their own digital identity “safe” encrypted on the highly secure blockchain, or distributed ledger. The distributed ledger technology automatically processes, validates and authenticates data exchanges and all interactions with the Blockchain — no Blockchain knowledge or expertise is required.
Distributed ledger databases exist across several locations. The very nature of a distributed ledger prevents any sort of tampering and discourages the kind of attacks that are common on standard centralized identity databases.
With BlockID, each user’s information is encrypted using their own unique cryptographic key pairs, with their private key stored securely on their own mobile devices. That means there are literally thousands of separate and unique encryption keys and mobile devices protecting the identity data, which makes it impervious to hacking.
The BlockID blockchain is NOT:
- A public blockchain infrastructure based on mining
- A crypto currency / private token based solution
Decentralization is key to eliminate the need for a central authority or intermediary to process, validate or authenticate transactions. This is accomplished by distributed ledger (AKA Blockchain) technology to store and protect personally identifiable information while providing users sole access and control over their data.
Blockchain technology provides several key enabling capabilities:
- Decentralized Public Key Infrastructure (DPKI)
- Decentralized Storage
- Manageability and Control
Distributed Ledger Technology
Proof of Authority is the consensus algorithm that applies to validate and store records in the database. By definition, Proof of Authority distributed ledgers are secured by the validating nodes that are arbitrarily selected as trustworthy entities.
As technology provider, 1Kosmos is the trustworthy entity that validates transactions.
1Kosmos leverages the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), which is a protocol and peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system.
All information in the 1Kosmos distributed ledger is time stamped and given a unique cryptographic signature. The data is replicated across locations. Thus, we provide a verifiable and auditable history of all information stored on a particular dataset.
The transactions are grouped in blocks and each new block includes a hash of the previous one, chaining them together. Once data has been written to the distributed ledger, it can never be modified — doing so would otherwise break or invalidate the chain because the cryptographic signatures that hold the chain together would no longer match. The chain of blocks is replicated across many servers, so there’s no centralized database and no single point of failure, which also helps to ensure its integrity.
This makes a distributed ledger an ideal technology for storing identity data as well as the complete history of its usage — perfect for auditability. All of the data is encrypted with the person’s own public cryptography key, so only they can decrypt it and authorize its use with their corresponding private key.
While 1Kosmos can be deployed using other blockchain technologies, we’ve selected Ethereum as our base deployment technology
In addition to using an Ethereum private distributed ledger to create and store Distributed Identifiers (DIDs), BlockID has built a privacy layer around Ethereum to leverage smart contracts. Smart contracts broker the request and exchange of information between the user and your authorization systems, seamlessly and automatically.
Benefits of the 1Kosmos BlockID Private Blockchain
The 1Kosmos private Blockchain-based data storage architecture promotes trust between your organization and your customers for all transactions purposes and more and mitigates internal fraudulent issues.
Leveraging the BlockID Private Blockchain Ecosystem entails storing the customers and employees biometric information in a virtually incorruptible system to ensure they are who they say they are at all times throughout the process. Employees’ and customers’ data stored in our distributed ledger aren’t subjected to data breaches.
The immutability of a distributed ledger is leveraged to record service provider-customer interactions. The document can never be modified, leaving an auditing trail, and therefore creating trust between all parties involved.