Biblio

Digital identity is the key element of digital transformation in representing any real-world entity in the digital form. To ensure a successful digital future the requirement for an effective digital identity is paramount, especially as demand increases for digital services. Several Identity Management (IDM) systems are developed to cope with identity effectively, nonetheless, existing IDM systems have some limitations corresponding to identity and its management such as sovereignty, storage and access control, security, privacy and safeguarding, all of which require further improvement. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is an emerging IDM system which incorporates several required features to ensure that identity is sovereign, secure, reliable and generic. It is an evolving IDM system, thus it is essential to analyse its various features to determine its effectiveness in coping with the dynamic requirements of identity and its current challenges. This paper proposes numerous governing principles of SSI to analyse any SSI ecosystem and its effectiveness. Later, based on the proposed governing principles of SSI, it performs a comparative analysis of the two most popular SSI ecosystems uPort and Sovrin to present their effectiveness and limitations.

Managing identity across an ever-growing digital services landscape has become one of the most challenging tasks for security experts. Over the years, several Identity Management (IDM) systems were introduced and adopted to tackle with the growing demand of an identity. In this series, a recently emerging IDM system is Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) which offers greater control and access to users regarding their identity. This distinctive feature of the SSI IDM system represents a major development towards the availability of sovereign identity to users. uPort is an emerging open-source identity management system providing sovereign identity to users, organisations, and other entities. As an emerging identity management system, it requires meticulous analysis of its architecture, working, operational services, efficiency, advantages and limitations. Therefore, this paper contributes towards achieving all of these objectives. Firstly, it presents the architecture and working of the uPort identity management system. Secondly, it develops a Decentralized Application (DApp) to demonstrate and evaluate its operational services and efficiency. Finally, based on the developed DApp and experimental analysis, it presents the advantages and limitations of the uPort identity management system.