IBM and Hyperledger have joined Microsoft, Accenture and co in Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), a blockchain identity consortium. The foundation welcomed the participation of the organizations in a blog post on Wednesday.
DIF was created in May 2017 to develop an open source decentralized identity ecosystem for people, organizations, apps, and devices. DIF membership includes Microsoft, Accenture, Ideo, Gem, Blockstack, Sovrin, Civic, Netki and a host of blockchain start-ups and projects.
IBM believes strongly in partnerships for quick growth in the blockchain technology; they boast various partnerships including the Hyperledger consortium. It has ongoing partnerships with Canadian banks and another with global food giants – Nestle, Unilever, Walmart, etc. These are all in view of developing standards and sharing technology necessary for industry-wide evolution. In the area of digital identity, IBM is already pioneering new digital identity and attributes sharing networks built in partnership with SecureKey.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] “Beyond just the technology, however, we must work as a community to establish standards and evolve regulations to work in a decentralized world”.
– Jerry Cuomo (Vice President, Blockchain Technologies, IBM) [/perfectpullquote]
According to Cuomo, IBM joined DIF because they believe it will take an open community and standards to achieve the vision of self-sovereign identity. Since blockchain technology is largely uncharted, it would be difficult for a single player to develop well-rounded solutions from the ground unaided. Partnerships like this set the foundation – an ecosystem where innovations from individual companies can thrive and there can be interconnectivity. DIF noted in the post that “It was clear that creating this ecosystem would require joining hands to design, develop, and nurture the underlying technology together, as a community.”
Hyperledger is an open source collaboration created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. Hosted by Linux Foundation, it has great cross-industry participation from premier and general members including Microsoft, Accenture, Cisco, Hitachi, Fujitsu, IBM, Intel, Deloitte, and Huawei.
Mahesh Sashital is cofounder of Smartereum.
He was previously Vice President at J.P. Morgan. He has over 15 years of experience in software engineering at various Fortune 20 companies. He has a Bachelor's in Engineering from the University of Mumbai and an MBA from the University of Texas-Austin.
