Buried in Facebook's Libra White Paper, a Digital Identity Bombshell

Facebook's Libra white paper includes a brief but potentially seismic nod to digital identity standards.

With 2 billion users worldwide, Facebook may be able to succeed where others have failed in jump-starting a globally accepted digital ID. Some identity experts say this is even more important than the cryptocurrency, but others question how much control Libra would give users and find its approach overbearing.

"An additional goal of the association is to develop and promote an open identity standard. We believe that decentralized and portable digital identity is a prerequisite to financial inclusion and competition."

Dave Birch, director of Consult Hyperion and the author of books on digital identity.

"There are no throwaway remarks in a Facebook white paper that has taken a year to put together. It's in there for a reason. [Facebook] are actually going to try and fix the identity problem."

A Facebook spokeswoman said this week that the company had nothing to add about identity beyond what's in the white paper.

More recently, such work under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium has included things like Decentralized Identifiers and the verifiable credentials standard, both meant to enable self-sovereign digital identity.

Some veterans of this field were taken aback by the suggestion that the Libra Association would develop an open identity standard.

"Decentralized" could simply mean a user's identity data - their attributes and identifiers - are spread among nodes that are run on the Libra blockchain, said Windley.

In the absence of any detail on what might comprise a decentralized identity standard from Libra's perspective, some dots can be joined by examining the recent work of George Danezis and his co-founders at Chainspace, a startup acquired by Facebook in May. A paper introducing a "Selective disclosure credential scheme" called Coconut.