Although we are very much still in the early stages, blockchain technology is already beginning to show signs of its truly massive potential. Whether or not you buy into the volatility of cryptocurrency markets, there is still a ton to learn and investigate about the long term implications of the backend technology, which promises to revolutionize the way we organize, store, and authenticate, consumer and enterprise information.
Applications of blockchain hinge on the use of decentralized ledgers, used to track and monitor ownership of digital assets (blocks). Effectively, they create a way for untrusted parties to reach agreement (consensus) on a common digital history. The common digital history is immutable and verifiable, so none of the data can be easily faked and/or duplicated.
One of the more promising use cases for this technology is to fundamentally disrupt the way we manage and secure our personal identities. This is an especially lucrative problem for technologists and industry experts who are working to accelerate blockchain to reach global scale. Â Â
The problem is that, although the internet has largely become a far more secure and efficient place, the literal (and cumbersome) process of managing our identity has not changed whatsoever. We still rely on a number of legacy methodologies, like pen and paper, to support the organization of, some could argue, some of our most important personal information. While identity management systems vary by government and region, most all are lagging years behind modern standards of operational efficiency. Why?
Centralized systems of power, like we see in the form of large governments, have little to no incentive to improve the process. Not only do we see an extremely poor "user experience" for citizens who need to update/manage their identity, we also know that millions and millions of people, globally, do not have access to the most up to date version of their personal records. Inaccessibility and inefficiency have plagued and excluded citizens of the world from being in control of their personal lives.
And though this incompetence has cost the general public invaluable dollars and time, the real cost is in how governments currently protect our information - in costly, unsafe centralized identity systems. There are numerous vulnerability problems whenever you store data in a single location.
