Bitcoin Forum

I think its possible to use the blockchain (or a public ledger) to store multiple identities of individuals and have them hold on to the private key to restore their identities on multiple services/sign ups in case of loss. I'll explain

My friend carries around 14 cards in his wallet: multiple debit cards, loyalty cards, National ID card, Social Security card. . .you get the picture. Here in Kenya, the national identification card/issuing system is separate from tax ID, Social Security ID and hospital insurance iD. There's no centralized database system to lock in all identities into 1 card. Losing any of these cards requires a tedious process of restoring it. Takes days/weeks/months depending on card. Much of the national system isn't computerized to streamline process [read zero-early adoption]

To my point. Imagine a 'transaction' on a public ledger that establishes an individual and all his/her identities on whatever service [ALL in one]. Any additional identities are added to an address through 'new transactions'. The info will be hashed and the private key secured by the individual. Losing any of the cards would just require the owner to restore his identity on a new card via the private key and a new transaction to verify restoration.

I'm curious on whether such a system is in development based on the blockchain concept. Are you aware of any? I'd like to get your take on the feasibility of this. I'm not looking to develop, but rather, to have it as a possible application of cryptos to Africa for a digital currency awareness campaign.

This could be imho very dangerous ( once your identification is stolen you are srewed up)

But everything like this is possible since you can add custom message to each transaction. So you could add transaction with message "Kenya's ID #5468479" and than you could verify identity by private key. In this case there would be needed to one time confirm this transaction with your government (they need to verify your identity and connect it with your public key in some of there database).

This could be countered by let's say having multiple signatures. One with govt (the notary and custodian) and the other with the individual. Both sets of private keys would be required to restore identity. Theft would have to take both private keys/multiple private keys.

Though U r moving in the right direction blockchain does not solve your problem. There is a concept called Ethereum, which works on distributed data storage. You may work on that... Here is the white paper for the same => https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/%5BEnglish%5D-White-Paper

The block chain is the important thing for this. Ethereum and bitcoin both use the concept of a block chain, albeit differently I'm aware of the Ethereum project and have I'm keenly following its progress.

The advantage of using the Bitcoin block chain is to leverage an already secure consensus model with a large number of miners/participants. Maybe an application similar to colored coins that is built on top of the bitcoin block chain. ID coins?