Microsoft's ION digital identity network is now live on Bitcoin mainnet

Microsoft's decentralized identity team has released the ION decentralized identity network on the Bitcoin mainnet. This is a new framework for online identity authentication. It is essentially similar to layer 2 technologies such as the Lightning Network, but its focus is not on payment, but on using the Bitcoin network to create digital identity IDs for online identity authentication.

With an identity ID network like ION, users can log in to websites directly without having to rely on passwords, email addresses, or mobile phones.

“We are excited to announce the completion and release of ION v1 to the Bitcoin mainnet,” Microsoft’s Daniel Buchner wrote in a blog post. “We have deployed an ION node in our production infrastructure and are also working with other organizations. ION does not rely on centralized entities, trusted validators, or specific protocol tokens. ION is accountable to no one but you and the community.”

Decrypting ION

ION is open source, and anyone can download the source code and run an ION node to use the service. ION uses the Sidetree open source protocol, a decentralized identity ID protocol developed by developers from Microsoft, ConsenSys, Mattr, and Transmute.

ION entered the closed beta phase in June 2020 and was later opened to the public. It uses the same logic as the Bitcoin transaction layer for identity signing and uses public and private keys to verify the user's corresponding identity ID.

For example, if you want to log in to a site using the ION protocol using your email account or social media account, you can directly use your ION account to sign the DID to verify that you own the account. Through the encrypted link generated by ION, the ION network can verify for the site whether you own the ID associated with your account.

Any private information associated with the ID will be stored off-chain, depending on the service. ION's identity ID is anchored to the Bitcoin network through the IPFS protocol, and an ION node can process up to 10,000 ID requests in a single transaction.

Users can create and manage multiple identities with different keys for different services. Some of these can be used regularly to log into services that users access every day, including email and social media, or they can be used one-time, such as verifying concert or event tickets.

Anyone interested in running ION can either run a remote node or run a node themselves.

Microsoft also provides developers with an API to directly access services without having to download nodes or wallets; it also develops a corresponding DIDs blockchain browser.

After the release of v1, the team will focus on releasing light clients to speed up node bootstrapping. Identity ID authentication can be performed while the relevant transactions are still in the Bitcoin memory pool, thus simplifying identity ID resolution.

Are DIDs the future?

Microsoft’s ION has attracted contributions from the crypto community including Casa, ConsenSys, Gemini, BitPay and Protocol Labs, as well as help from teams such as Cloudflare and Spruce.

ION is also working with the Transmute and SecureKey teams, who are also building their own DID networks.

Decentralized identity (DID) is a very good non-monetary use case for public blockchains such as Bitcoin, and it has even been noticed by the head of blockchain at the World Economic Forum. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a web standards body founded in 1994, is currently evaluating DIDs as a Candidate Recommendation, which means that the forum is considering recognizing these identity frameworks as international standards.

“Microsoft embracing the DIDs property of the bitcoin network is a step in the right direction,” cryptocurrency industry veteran Christopher Allen told CoinDesk in 2019. “You can have a cloud service hosted by Microsoft Azure and it’s absolutely secure because everything on it is encrypted with keys that you control and everything is running under your authorization even though it’s on a cloud service.”

(Reprinted from "CD Chinese Version")