[Background information of the Certified Certification system in Korea]

1. The dilemma in the existing system: Universality vs Usability

- Certified Certificates which are universally used but inconvenient.

- Private Certificates which are convenient but have limited use.

After the Digital Signature Act of 1999, authentication methods for financial and other e-commerce transactions have been decided solely by government regulations. Only institutes authorized by the government can issue Certified Certificates, and a separate program must to be installed on your computer by law for the certificate to be used.

Korea’s authentication environment, which was built around government regulations, started to break away from the global standard. This led to corporations in Korea losing global competitiveness. In the future it is expected that there will no longer be classifications of Certified / Private Certifications, and all certificates will have the same authenticity. The benefits are as follows;

Benefits for corporations

Can freely create / upgrade and implement authentication systems that match the company’s needs. Benefits for users

Easier use of the authentication process than the inefficient government regulated certificates.

Even with the benefits stated above, the uses of private certificates were limited due to the lack of ‘trust’ in the certificate itself, since it is not certified by a certified institution. However, using blockchain technology, this problem can be solved.

2. Building trust without a third party mediator by using distributed ledger technology.

To understand how blockchain technology can solve the problem of trust without a mediator, you need to understand the difference between a centralized network and a distributed network.

[Centralized Network vs. Distributed Network]

Unlike a centralized network, which stores and process all the data in a central server, a distributed network spreads data across a network of computers (nodes) and follows a specific set of rules to share and update the same data.

This specific set of rules, known as a consensus algorithm, allows the nodes to judge if the updated or changed data is trustworthy. With a consensus algorithm in place, a distributed network can maintain an accurate database without the use of a trusted third party.. This means that all participants in the network can build a mutual trust among each other and share the same trustworthy data.