ConsenSys has joined forces with Microsoft and Blockstack Labs to work with developers around the world to create an open-source, self-sovereign, blockchain-based identity system. We intend for this system to be usable to address the human rights crimes exacerbated by lack of legal identification.



This collaboration was solidified at the ID2020 conference, held at the United Nations last week in New York , where UN members, private companies, and government agencies co-convened to define the problem of identity in the world. The goal of ID2020 is to have a legal identity for every person without the need for identification by 2020. Some sobering statistics from the ID2020 conference to consider:



Some are sprawling beasts, hell-bent on assimilating anything and everything in their path — like the creature in John Carpenter’s The Thing. Or the suburbs. But most are pretty circumscribed and, in fact, compatible with the legal definition above — just like Nick Szabo’s OG definition from 1994:

● 1.5B people, representing ⅕ of the world’s population, do not have proper legal identification

● Human trafficking accounts for a black market of $50M USD annually

● 1 of 3 known victims of human trafficking are children under the age of 5

