Project Description

Market Need

Blockchain may be one of the most revolutionary technologies to arise in the last decade, with the potential to transform many industries. Blockchain a

pplications centre around the management of value through the use of programs called smart contracts. Value on a blockchain can take many forms including currency, real world assets, identity and credentials. Smart contracts are used to enforce contractual agreements, often using triggers from outside the blockchain to transfer value. A commonly used smart contract in the context of cryptocurrencies is the transfer of money between accounts.

The aim of this project was to explore the power of Smart Contracts and create a demonstrator prototype application using them. The demonstrator we created has widespread applicability, and is generic enough to be easily applied to many sectors.

Technology Solution

The demonstrator prototype application that CeADAR created was a credential management system, enabling a credential provider to assign a credential to an owner. The ownercan then share this credential, or part of it with checkers through the blockchain. In Figure 1 below, Bob is sharing part of his “Public Liability Insurance” certificate with “Construction Company”.

Figure 1. Credential management with granular permissions. This shows the steps involved in creating a “Public Liability Insurance” certificate, assigning it to Bob, and Bob permitting “Construction Company” to view it.

Using a blockchain for this application has a number of advantages:

  • Blockchains ensure provenance: the origin of a certificate is guarantee by the underlying technology.
  • Every party on the blockchain can audit the smart contracts.
  • The responsibility for maintaining the system is distributed.
  • Each party has access to the most recent information.
  • Entities can only see the information that they have given permission to.

Granular Permission

One key component of this credential management system is the ability to choose which attributes of a credential to share. The example in Figure 1 shows Bob sharing a certificate with “Construction Company”, but not the cover amount. This is possible because attributes are permitted to have their own permissions.

Technical details

The blockchain application was developed using Hyperledger / Fabric. It consists of several smart contracts, asset definitions, entity types and a permissions file for accessing the smart contracts. The main smart contracts are used for:

  1. Issuing a certificate
  2. Authorizing access to a certificate/attribute
  3. Revoking access to a certificate/attribute

Scripts were used to deploy the blockchain network. To enable interaction with the blockchain, the network was setup with two REST endpoints, both using multi organisation authentication. This setup enables multiple entities to authenticate with the same rest server.

For each entity type (Provider, Owner andChecker) on the blockchain, a unique web interface was developed. This enables them to perform all the operations to create, revoke, share and update credentials according to the their role and permissions.

Applicability

Credentials are an essential part of many organisations. This demonstrator was proposed by Site Passport who are interested in being able to manage construction related credential on a blockchain. However, the demonstrator is domain agnostic and can be deployed to address credential management in many domains, including:

  • Insurance: Storing and sharing insurance documents.
  • Education: Managing Certificates, Diplomas and Degrees.
  • Consumer Banking: KYC — Manging customer information between banks.
  • Healthcare: Managing medical staff access and permissions.
  • Property Law: Land deeds stored on a blockchain asset registry.

RESEARCH TEAM

  • Saad Shahid
  • Dr. David Haughton
  • Dr. Oisin Boydell
  • Dr Brian MacNamee