Disposable Identities? Why Digital Identity Matters to Blockchain Disintermediation and for Society

Loretta Anania (), Gaëlle Gars () and Rob Kranenburg ()
Additional contact information
Loretta Anania: DG CNECT
Gaëlle Gars: Policy Analyst on Digital and Urban Policy
Rob Kranenburg: Founder of IoT Council

Chapter Chapter 14 in Disintermediation Economics, 2021, pp 297-327 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Many smart contract applications—or more precisely blockchain-based digital ledger technologies (DLTs) proliferate. And yet, without accounting for the identity dimension and the different authentication regimes, there is little chance that these technologies will gain widespread use, and their disruptive innovation potential will not be realized. A growing number of digital interactions in which we engage online require more trust and more security; choosing the right identity technologies and data policy safeguards is an important policy choice. Digital wallets are part of our proposed solution: based on disposable identities tied to events and timelines. We explain why identity technologies matter. We describe the communication network architectures and functionalities. We show how EU Treaty legislation safeguards the important elements of this identity framework. We give examples of self-sovereign identity, and other solutions adopted by EU Member States. We conclude that successful deployment requires an EU legislative and regulatory framework fit for the digital society. The digital identity problem starts from the perspective of serving half a billion individual citizens, and inclusion requires public policy that strongly supports it.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-65781-9_14

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030657819

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-65781-9_14

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().