The software giant Microsoft said that it saw a potential for public blockchains in the support of decentralized identities and that it would explore the possibilities of its Microsoft Authenticator application.

In an article published Feb. 12, the Microsoft Identity Division doubled its belief that blockchain technology is the right way to store, maintain, protect, and distribute user identification information in a tamper-proof environment. decentralized.

Ankur Patel of the Microsoft Identity Division said in the post: "Some public channels (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, to name a few) provide a solid foundation for rooting. DIDs, registration of DPKI operations and anchoring certificates.]

That said, the company admitted that scaling is a major hurdle before a decentralized authentication authentication can be available simultaneously for millions of users. As such, the company explained that it is now planning to develop additional layers to achieve the goal of scaling up.

"To overcome these technical hurdles, we collaborate on decentralized Layer 2 protocols that run on these public blockchains to achieve a global scale, while preserving the attributes of a world-class DID system," Patel writes. .

For now, the company will "experiment" with decentralized identities by adding support for them in its Microsoft Authenticator application, which is already used by millions of people around the world.

In what could be considered a digression on Facebook, which is widely and controversially used on the Internet for access to various services and sites, the post stated:

"Rather than granting broad consent to countless applications and services and disseminating their identity data to many providers, individuals need to" 39, a secure encrypted digital center for storing their identity data and easily controlling access to it

The announcement comes less than a month after Microsoft and Hyperlegger joined the UN's ID2020 project, which aims to set up a secure and verifiable digital identification system that can be put in place. on the scale.

As reported, Microsoft donated $ 1 million to the ID2020 initiative at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.

Image of the Microsoft Office Building via Shutterstock

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