Maturity of Blockchange Experiments Across the Identity Lifecycle
For the most part, the efforts to leverage blockchain to address identity issues are still fledgling. Their lack of maturity is consistent with ongoing experimentation taking place across the Blockchange landscape. For example, Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation’s 2018 study found that of the nearly 200 blockchain initiatives examined, 74% were still at the pilot or idea stage, and just over half were estimated to have the potential to impact their beneficiaries by early 2019.
Our research, culminating in the nine Blockchange for identity case studies contained in Appendix 1, reinforced this perception. We conclude that impact is still largely aspirational and notional. But we did find that experimentation at different stages of the identity lifecycle have reached different levels of maturity, if not yet on-the-ground impact. These variations are worth considering as they may suggest differential potential for impact in the near- and medium-term future. In the below table we describe the overarching maturity of experimentation at different stages of the identity lifecycle, and reflect on specific projects from our case studies. Our maturity assessment, to be clear, is based on a cross-cutting consideration of how well blockchain attributes map to problems present at each stage of the lifecycle, and are not entirely based on the projects referenced in our case studies – many of which have still not achieved a high level maturity.
Click a cube to learn about each stage
Provisioning
Current Examples
- Illinois Secure Digital Birth Certificates
Impact and Maturity
Maturity: Low
Explanation: Although the need to provide identities to 1.1 billion people is seen as a major goal for Blockchange, effectively achieving that goal still appears relatively far in the future. Compelling projects like the Illinois birth registry pilot (which was a proof-of-concept registering existing birth certificates on a blockchain) are beginning to elucidate a roadmap for continued development, but confirmed, broadly credible entities prepared to recognize newly provisioned IDs are still lacking. At an operational level, an ID is only valuable if it can be shared with and accepted by another party.
Administration
Current Examples
- Self-Sovereign Identity on the Blockchain in Zug, Switzerland
- Blockchain for Early Childhood Development in South Africa
Impact and Maturity
Maturity: Medium
Explanation: The potential to move from pilot experimentation to larger scale implementations is somewhat greater at the administration stage. The potential for blockchain to meaningfully address issues around information silos, security and privacy, as well as other administrative concerns, is clearer given the guaranteed attributes of integrity and immutability. However, in many cases, questions remain about whether blockchain is uniquely—or even most effectively—capable of providing such administrative value.
Authentication
Current Examples
- World Food Programme Building Blocks
Impact and Maturity
Maturity: Medium
Explanation: From a technological perspective, the authentication process – i.e., confirming whether an identifier is accurate and credible – is relatively straightforward given consensus mechanisms and the immutable information held on chain enabling confirmation. The question of leveraging blockchain at the authentication stage toward increasing individual agency, however, is less clear. WFP’s Building Blocks represents a good example of an identity system that is operationally effective but does not grant any additional control or agency to the participating refugee user base.
Authorization
Current Examples
- MIT Digital Diplomas
- Blockchain-enabled Voting in University and State Party Convention Elections
Impact and Maturity
Maturity: High
Explanation: Identity authorization processes are generally more mature as the central problems at that stage in the life-cycle are primarily efficiency-related. Across sectors – including notably in industry-driven efforts – efforts to increase efficiency and lower transaction costs, often by cutting out middlemen and replacing bureaucratic processes with automated ones, are yielding the clearest and most concrete benefits. The digital diploma and voting pilots we studied as part of our series of case studies are not necessarily far more mature than experiments at earlier stages in the lifecycle, but the alignment between blockchain attributes and authorization challenges is clearer.
Auditing/Monitoring
Current Examples
- Swedish Blockchain Land Registry
- Blockchain Vote Registration in Sierra Leone
Impact and Maturity
Maturity: High
Explanation: The capacity for blockchain to help deliver benefits in auditing and monitoring is high given the possibility of implementing a blockchain in such a way that the immutable information held on chain can be made transparent to the public or shared with certain target actors (such as election monitors or land use governance institutions). Of course, possessing the capacity for delivering such benefits does not necessarily mean that all implementations of blockchain will be similarly successful. A private, permissioned blockchain, for example, or a blockchain whose first block included inaccurate or low-quality information, will obviously not lead to the same types of auditing capabilities.
