Microsoft Launches Decentralized Identity Tool on Bitcoin Blockchain

Microsoft is launching the first decentralized infrastructure implementation by a major tech company that is built directly on the bitcoin blockchain.

Christopher Allen, a crypto veteran and the co-founder of the World Wide Web Consortium working group for decentralized identity solutions, told CoinDesk that Microsoft's move could impact the entire tech industry.

"A lot of enterprise infrastructures use Microsoft products," Allen said.

Yorke Rhodes, a program manager on Microsoft's blockchain engineering team, told CoinDesk that Microsoft's team has been working for a year on a key signing and validation software that relies on public networks, like bitcoin or ethereum, yet can handle far greater throughput than the underlying blockchain itself.

"There are systems that we have at Microsoft that give you permissions in an enterprise context, a product called Active Directory, that we think need to be able to recognize these DIDs as well."

"To have Microsoft say they are not scared of bitcoin, and in fact, it has some very good properties and we are willing to take advantage of those properties, is, I think, a step in the right direction."

Although Rhodes said he was not aware of any dealings with Facebook, there was clearly a misalignment between the two company's goals for using blockchain technology.

In contrast to the allegations that Facebook is taking a different direction with its project, both ConsenSys and Microsoft are opting to make open source initiatives core pillars of their respective business models.

"You could have a service that is in the cloud hosted by Microsoft Azure, but is absolutely secure because everything in it is encrypted with your keys that you control and everything that run under your authority, even though it's in the cloud," Allen said.

In Rhodes' opinion, current experiments with blockchain technology are comparable to Microsoft releasing Windows 95 in decades past, which helped boost mainstream internet usage through a consumer-oriented operating system.