Hypersign | Cross-chain Identity Protocol & Whitelisting solution
Built on Polkadot and Ethereum
We live in a world where we login on tens of different platforms a day, and in order to secure our account we use different passwords, and further secure them with two-step authentication options. Heavily relying on our memory, back-ups, and third parties. Hypersign is building an ecosystem in which passwords & 2FA is no longer required, eliminating the risks involved while improving the user experience. How? You’ll learn all about it in this article.
A worldwide challenge
The above scenario introduces a challenge we struggle with on a daily basis. Let’s take a step further and reflect on various scenarios we all deal with.
In a digital world, where the adoption of especially mobile & IoT (internet of things) devices continues to see significant growth, so do the number of digital accounts, passwords and theft.
We all have email accounts, social media accounts, digital bank accounts, and other accounts used to access our personal & financial data. We use passwords to secure our accounts. But with hackers getting smarter, we now have to use different passwords across various platforms, and on top secure them with one time passwords (OTPs) or two-step authenticators. While this further increases security of our account, it also impacts our user experience and risks. Because, is it really more secure?
OTPs usually are sent to your mobile device through SMS channels. While this seems secure, these channels are actually very insecure and have proven to be ‘easily’ accessed by hackers and thieves through wireless interceptions (in countries that don’t encrypt texts), trojan viruses and SIM swap attacks (most common these days). For two-step verification options we rely on third parties, such as Google or Authy, adding third-party platform risks. This means we’ve increased the number of steps to access our account, while effectively not securing our accounts that much more than they already were. While also sharing our data with more and more third parties, without controlling this data.
Hypersign
Hypersign aims to tackle these challenges. How? By building decentralized identity & access management infrastructure for enterprises, in an environment that counts three stakeholders.
1. Users: You & I. Our devices locally store our own personal data.
2. Issuer: Identity providers. Issues credentials & verifies user-data.
3. Verifier: Service providers. Verifies credentials.
Summarized, a user would provide personal data to the issuer. The issuer then issues an encrypted signed document and can store this document without saving personal data. The user can store on their device or cloud storage account (likely less secure). The user signs this document as well and can not use it at any time to login to their accounts. The service provider can confirm the document is legit, as it’s signed by both the issuer and user, and doesn’t need to safe any data.
Where things get interesting is Hypersign adds blockchain into this ecosystem. By using blockchain technology, digital signatures can be verified by service providers at any time, without relying for the issuer to be online at any given time. As the encrypted and signed file is owned and provided by the user. This is an automated process, where the verifier queries the request to the blockchain to a decentralized identifier which fetches the public keys to verify the digital signature, for independent and automated verification.
The ecosystem
In order for this to work, first, all three stakeholders need to on-board on the Hypersign identity network. This is done by registering public keys, which are then stored on the blockchain. In return, an identifier gets issued, called a decentralized identifier (DID)
Once the stakeholders are onboarded, users can now authenticate themselves when login into their account.
Besides these three stake holders, there’s four main tools used by enterprises to deploy the decentralized passwordless authentication solution.
Hypersign Identity Wallet
The first tool is the Hypersign identity wallet. This wallet is used by users to control and store their private keys and verifiable credentials. This can be through a mobile application, browser extension or even through cloud storage. On top of that, users don’t just own their data, they can also decide to monetise it to earn direct & passive income.
Hypersign Studio
Hypersign Studio is the second tool, used by identity providers. It’s a web-based application used to manage credentials by the issuer. This tool is powered by the Hypersign node.
Hypersign SDK
The SDK is the third tool, used by service providers. It’s integrated by verifiers on their website to generate QR codes on the login page, used by the user to login and verify their credentials.
Hypersign Adapter
The fourth and final tool is the Hypersign Adapter, used by centralized identifiers such as Auth0 to convert traditional login processes (username / password) to Hypersign’s passwordless authentication process. This is an easy and quick integration.
Hypersign Blockchain Network
We just mentioned the Hypersign node. Nodes are used to power the Hypersign Blockchain Network. The network is used to enable actors to verify whether other actors are legit, rather than using it to store (encrypted) user data. It’s a hybrid blockchain which leverages both Proof of Stake & Proof of Work. PoS is used for consensus, whereas PoW is used for security.
Hypersign chose to build a hybrid network because PoS is is more scalable, cheaper and provides higher-performance. Though, PoS has proven to be less secure than PoW. Therefore Aeternity’s main network is leveraged in combination with PoS. If you’re interested in learning more about the details of this hybrid consensus mechanism, then definitely check out their white paper.
Those who want to help power the network can choose to become a validator. Technically, anyone with skin in the game can become a network validator by running a node. Nodes are responsible for generating and verifying new blocks. The PoW network is mainly used to randomise the nodes chosen to do this for a specific block, making it more unpredictable.
By doing so and by issuing verifiable credentials validators earn fees / mining rewards. Whenever a service provider authenticates or verifies a user, it can endorse a user upon verification. This is recorded on the blockchain, building user reputation. It’s optional but helps to identify fraudulent sign up attempts easier and quicker.
Hypersign — HID Use Case
The Hypersign network is powered by the HID token, a utility token. The token has several use cases within the ecosystem.
- HID can be used by actors to pay for services.
- Users can pay issuers directly (in HID) for registering credentials through the identity wallet, without needing to go through any additional processes.
- HID is used to incentivize network validators (Hypersign envisions identity providers to become the validators. Personally, I believe this is mainly going to be powered by individuals instead who stake their tokens to earn yield by running nodes).
Hypersign Team & Roadmap
There’s currently three members listed on the Hypersign website.
Irfan Khan, responsible for business & strategy.
Vikram Bhushan, responsible for product & engineering.
Vishwas Bhushan, responsible for research & development.
All three members work at the same company, which they’ve founded as well: Hypermine Technologies. Irfan is a serial-entrepreneur who’s previously founded three other companies. His experience is with government and Telecom Regulatory Authorities, to build security and data exchange infrastructures. Vikram has experience in development as a full stack engineer and frontend architect. Whereas Vishwas has experience in blockchain technology, cryptography and security.
The team is backed by various advisors and investors, such as Moonhale, Drops Ventures, Solidity Ventures and Block OG Capital, with partners such as Aeternity, Ontology and Elrond.
The team has mapped out their roadmap all the way to March 2022, as always it’s a working document that’s subject to change but currently contains the following developments:
Conclusion
Hypersign is built by a team of experienced members who all have great experience with running a business. They’ve also managed to get various well-known VC’s like Twin Apex Capital and MoonWhale to back them, together with some well-known blockchain projects to partner with them.
Overall it’s a unique idea in an environment that screams for change. I do see challenges in onboarding people and providers, especially as users have to pay for the generation of credentials. Though, the easier this is made the more likely it is this project sees traction and growth.
