Blockchain: the new era of digital identification on the internet

Abstract

The Internet allows people to do virtually the same things in the digital realm as they do in real enviroments. Within the physical world, every person can be identified by a unique document containing the essential data that individualizes them from everyone else. On the contrary, today in the digital sphere, users can have a multitude of different identities under their control that can reliably identify then or not. Thus, in digital environments, users can act anonymously or pseudo-anonymity to undermine trust in transactions and, consequently, producing legal uncertainty. In view of such a situation, entities such as the EU have drawn up proposals for the creation of digital identity wallets in wich users’ identification data are recorded. However, due attention is not paid to the fact that the Internet is a digital space that knows no borders, and in wich it is difficult to force operators from the rest of the world to use a unique digital identity. In this context and given the importance of implementing a unique digital identity mechanism, blockchain appears as a transnational, immutable, distributed, secure and decentralized system that may be an ideal option to establish a unique digital identity that allows users operating on the Internet to be reliably identified. The objective of this article is to analyze the current situation of digital identity. We also argue that blockchain is a suitable system to ensure digital identity and facilitate the identification on the Internet.