IOTA launches the Unified Identity Protocol - The Cryptonomist

Yesterday IOTA, a project that uses Tangle and is aimed at the IoT (Internet of Things) sector, officially announced that it has developed the Unified Identity Protocol.

As can be read from the whitepaper, the lack of decentralised tools for identifying subjects can lead to incorrect and inaccurate or even fraudulent information because the interlocutor may have concealed, hidden or taken the identity of another subject.

It is not by chance that in the blockchain and crypto world it is increasingly necessary to interface with procedures such as KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti Money Laundering) in order to limit and identify the subjects who operate in this sector in a fraudulent way.

If, for example, a person stole more than $50 million in crypto, as happened recently on UpBit, and wanted to withdraw, they would necessarily have to go through those procedures, provided that the funds are not frozen before, at which point they would certainly not succeed.

IOTA points out that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) already has several drafts of a similar system, but that it is based on DLT, hence permissioned systems that can be modified by malicious people.

In contrast, by using a public blockchain, this does not happen, as it will be an algorithm based on IOTA itself and with open source code.

Obviously, such an identification system is suitable not only for people, but also for machines because, as is known, there is no universal protocol that the various IoT products adopt, and therefore in most cases, they do not communicate with each other and cannot identify themselves. However, with a unique and decentralised system that takes advantage of the Tangle protocol, there could be a revolution for the sector.

IOTA has recently also increased protection against Sybil attacks.