PROVO, UT, Dec. 12, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Sovrin Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to enabling self-sovereign digital identity for all, today announced a major feature update to the Sovrin Network. The Sovrin Network is the foundation for a future where secure digital identity allows individuals and businesses to conduct interactions online in a safe, private, and convenient way. The latest technology upgrades come a year after the Network went live and experienced enormous growth. With these new features, the Sovrin Network is in a position to enable mass adoption of digital identity.
“From daily data breaches to a global refugee crisis, the need for a universal, self-sovereign ID has never been more relevant,” said Heather Dahl, executive director, Sovrin Foundation. “But the technologies to support a more secure digital world are here, and with this update to the Sovrin Network, 2019 will be a landmark year for the global advancement of digital identity.
The new features in Sovrin Network 1.6 focus on enhanced performance, stability, security, and compatibility and together support widespread public deployment. The Network now supports backward compatibility and enables easier monitoring and administering of nodes on the ledger. Sovrin Stewards, trusted organizations chosen to run validator nodes and provide consensus for the public ledger, can see the status of any node on the ledger, simplifying diagnosis and improving overall ledger performance and stability.
“The future is one in which secure, accessible digital identity for all is a reality,” said Chair of the Sovrin Foundation Board of Trustees and recognized identity pioneer Dr. Phil Windley. “The advances made this year by the Sovrin and open blockchain communities are unprecedented and give developers the tools they need to bring digital ID to the masses. Sovrin’s live 1.6 upgrade embodies that reality.”
The Sovrin Network is designed to bring the trust, personal control, and ease-of-use of analog IDs – like driver's licenses and employee ID cards – to the internet. The Sovrin Network uses open-source distributed-ledger technology, allowing developers to create interoperable applications that run on the Network. Businesses and institutions could potentially use these applications to issue and verify digital credentials while adhering to GDPR and other data privacy regulations. Identity holders can also use third-party applications, called agents, to privately collect, share, and independently manage their own digital credentials.
Additional detail on the newest features:
- New command line interface, including a new validator-info command for Stewards, which enhances performance by allowing Sovrin Stewards to query the status of any node in the pool while diagnosing pool performance.
- Security enhancements that support separate IP addresses and will allow stewards to further separate different traffic on the network, maintaining node consensus even in the event of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.
- A new ledger format that allows for future backward compatibility, which eliminates downtime by allowing the ledger to remain online and functional while nodes of the ledger are gradually updated to newer versions.
The Sovrin Network launched in 2017 and uses a diverse group of trusted organizations, called Stewards, to run the validator nodes that provide consensus for the public ledger. Currently, there are more than 50 Stewards, from 13 countries and six continents.
The Sovrin Foundation is a member of Hyperledger, a Linux Foundation Project. Sovrin uses Hyperledger Indy, one of the projects under the Hyperledger umbrella. The initial code for Hyperledger Indy was contributed by the Sovrin Foundation.
ABOUT THE SOVRIN FOUNDATION
The Sovrin Foundation is a nonprofit organization established to administer the Governance Framework governing the Sovrin Network, a decentralized global public network enabling self-sovereign identity on the internet. The Sovrin Network is and open source project, operated by independent Stewards and uses the power of a distributed ledger to give every person, organization, and thing the ability to own and control their own permanent digital identity.
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