Designing a Decentralized Identity Verification Platform

Abstract

In today's world, almost every private and public service has either fully embraced digitalization or is in the process of doing so, which is generally a positive trend. However, significant foundational challenges remain. Many services still depend on various centralized physical and digital identities, making it increasingly difficult for users to securely and reliably prove their identity with trusted credentials. Additionally, there are other risks, such as single points of failure, identity theft and fraud, censorship and discrimination, and limited user autonomy. To address some of these issues, the European Union has been developing the decentralized Digital ID Wallet initiative. This initiative functions like a physical wallet, allowing users to store multiple identities in one place at user premises and giving them control over their data, including the ability to decide what information to share, with whom, and when. While the concept is promising, one of the major challenges lies in designing and developing the necessary infrastructure, which involves creating secure digital identities, integrating them with existing systems, and ensuring they are accessible to a broad audience. This paper addresses these challenges by providing architectural guidelines and a formal description of common operations in such ecosystems, based on our own experiences in developing MVPs.