Orchestrating Digital Wallets for On- and Off-Chain Decentralized Identity Management

Abstract

Digital identity is becoming one of the core elements during the digitalization age, when more and more processes and interactions are taking place in the digital sphere. Therefore, current identity management approaches will define how these interactions will look in the future, but different fields and communities often approach management with their own solutions and tools, despite their similarities. This includes decentralized digital identities, where the identity is managed with asymmetric cryptographic keys, and no centralized entity oversees the whole identity system. This paper focuses on managing on- and off-chain decentralized digital identities, with the former being used for blockchain networks and the latter for self-sovereignty and privacy. While both types of decentralized identity build on the same cryptographic and identity primitives, there is no single wallet that handles both. Therefore, this paper proposes an orchestration solution for both wallet types, which enables their convergence to a single universal wallet and validates it with a real-life decentralized identity use case.