Blockchain Technology for Digital Identity Management: A Systematic Mapping Study

The digital identity, which is a must for accessing many online products and services, lets individuals to proove that they really are who they claim to be when it is securely associated with real world identities. Besides, digital identity is one of the most important elements of digitalization. However, there are some deficiencies in existing applications related to design, implementation, management and security of digital identities. The principal deficiencies may be count as the risks of improper use of data and violation of privacy arising from being under the control of central authorities such as governments or technology giants, and inconsistent data and nonproductive business processes arising from duplication of identity data amongst different authorities. Blockchain technology has a potential to eliminate these problems and nonproductivity by its inherent characteristics. Since its first emerge in 2008, blockchain technology has been closely followed and the field of application consistently expanded. Today, governments, international organizations such as United Nations and European Union and private sector carry out research, modelling and prototype development studies on digital identity with blockchain. In this study, systematic mapping method was used to have a holistic insight about the researches on utilization of blockchain for digital identity and it is also aimed to provide a perspective for future works.