In the Scramble to Fix Digital Identity, uPort Is a Project to Watch

The team at uPort, an ethereum-based identity protocol, is going after a bigger prize.

Rather than ask, "How can I get paid for my data?" uPort aims to answer, "Who am I in the digital age?".

According to Danny Zuckerman, uPort's head of strategy and operations, the project emerged from persistent calls across the ethereum developer community for an identity system - preferably a decentralized one, given ethereum's fundamental mission.

It's not necessarily safe to assume that uPort will only be buried in decentralized applications' innards, hidden from end users.

UPort is far from the only project working towards the goal of self-sovereign identity using blockchain technology.

Also in contrast to uPort, Project Indy is planning an ICO. Civic, which plans to fully roll out its identity platform later this year on RSK, a layer-two bitcoin smart contracts platform, recently raised $30 million in an ICO. Microsoft and Accenture have unveiled an identity prototype that uses a private, permissioned version of ethereum.

Unlike ethereum-based uPort it is a freestanding blockchain.

UPort joined the Decentralized Identity Foundation - which includes big names like Microsoft and Accenture, among others - in order to develop a standard for everyone.

Tyler Mulvihill, the co-founder of Viant, which plans to go live with its ethereum-based supply chain platform this year, told CoinDesk that using uPort as its identity solution was "a really easy decision," not only because of the ConsenSys connection, but because "They're leading the space in self-sovereign identity."

The same questions that nag the ethereum ecosystem as a whole can make the way forward uncertain for uPort.