Picture a world where interacting with your government isn’t a spirit-sapping ordeal in forms and miles-long lines. A future in which establishing your identity is as easy as a touch of your smartphone. Sounds like science fiction? Maybe not. Our current, fragmented digital identity ecosystem is a disaster. Passports, driver's licenses, social security numbers – they're all siloed, vulnerable, and frankly, incredibly inefficient. This ridiculous inefficiency costs governments (and by extension you, the taxpayer) billions of dollars and puts citizens both infuriated and susceptible to identity theft. We need a better way.

National Identity, Reimagined Digitally?

Could Sign Protocol be that better way? Through their latest work, they’re working to bring digital identity, services, and assets on-chain. That's a mouthful, I know. What it really comes down to is building a universal trust infrastructure. Consider it a digital set of infrastructure on which governments can construct accessible, transparent, speedy, and safe services. The surprising link in this case is to how we conceive of national identity, full stop.

As an Irish person, one could say the notion of national identity is in my blood. It is planted deep in our past, in our narrative, in our spirit. For hundreds of years, identity was rooted in space, in home, to kinship networks, to communal narratives and cultural practices. In the digital age, those lines are being erased. Currently, Sign is working on national-level projects in the UAE, Thailand and Sierra Leone. In fact, their mission is to bring sovereign-grade identity to the blockchain. It’s more than just increasing convenience. It’s about redefining what it means to be a citizen in the 21st century. What if your passport, your visa, your entire identity could be securely issued and held on-chain, and verifiable from anywhere in the world?

Bureaucracy Be Gone?

With Sign’s technology, governments could issue, store and track digital credentials such as passports, visas and other formal identification on-chain. This would simplify the process and cut out layers of bureaucratic inefficiency, and it would save governments a crapload of money. We’re not just talking about improved access to government services, improved safety in your commute and better transparency and control over your data, though that’s a start. Think about avoiding the wasted time standing in line at DMV. You can even renew your driver’s license in a few clicks on your phone—completely securely verified on the blockchain!

Think about the possibilities for international travel. No more filling out visa applications, no more waiting in long lines at immigration. We do this by ensuring your identity is quickly and securely verified on the blockchain so that you can travel freely, efficiently and securely. The opportunities for economic expansion and international collaboration are boundless.

This is where the dread seeps in, the doom that gives your spine a shudder. Should we really have an enormous amount of faith in governments to handle that kind of power? What about privacy? What about the potential for abuse? These are real and fair concerns, and they must be addressed directly.

Guarding Against Government Overreach

The key is regulation and user consent. Unfortunately, any system that would otherwise manage our digital identities on this grand scale continues to be designed without privacy and security as core principles. People need to be in charge of their information. They have to make it clear to developers that they can revoke access at any time. We need regulatory frameworks to ensure against government overreach. These frameworks should be used to ensure that any new technologies serve to empower citizens—not surveil them.

Privacy by default Sign Protocol focuses on leveraging asymmetric encryption and zero-knowledge proofs to protect users’ privacy. This is a great step forward, but still not enough. We need to require regular independent audits to ensure security. Plus, we should adopt open-source code and ensure continuous public oversight for real transparency.

We know, it can be intimidating and easy to get bogged down in the weeds. The core idea is simple: we need a better way to manage digital identity, and blockchain technology offers a promising solution. Sign focuses on sovereign-grade identity and leads engagement in nation-level projects. Its deep commitment to user privacy has made it a natural competitive player in this field.

A Call to Action

The only question left is not if, but how, blockchain will be a part of the future of governance. We want to encourage these governments and policymakers to dream big about what Sign Protocol—and other technologies like it—can accomplish. We can’t just think through the ethics and societal implications of digital identity in a bubble. We have to be sure that these technologies are put to work empowering citizens, instead of controlling them.

The future of what it means to be American is being written today. Together, let’s ensure that it’s a future we can all be proud to live in. Together, let’s move toward responsible innovation and build a more secure, efficient, and equitable digital world that works for all people. The counterpoint – a landscape of siloed information, cyber vulnerability and misuse of public data by government – is just not tenable.