What is Ethereum ERC725? Self-Sovereign Identity Management on the Blockchain

User identity management remains critical to any dApps and is currently managed by "Trusted" third parties-a problem the ERC725 identity standard aims to solve.

The ERC725 identity standard is the brainchild of Fabian Vogelsteller, the creator of the ERC20 token standard that is used extensively in the blockchain ecosystem.

Created on Oct. 2, 2017, the ERC725 standard has been adopted by numerous blockchain projects aiming to incorporate decentralized identity standards into peer-to-peer marketplaces.

Origin Protocol, one of the most prominent projects to incorporate the ERC725 standard, highlights the benefits of a blockchain-based identity standard as a method of managing user reputation and trustworthiness in decentralized, peer-to-peer marketplaces.

In the current blockchain ecosystem, such a dApp would need to rely on trusted third party identity management or Oracle platforms, such as ChainLink, to hypothetically integrate with third parties.

Origin Protocol imagines an implementation of the ERC725 standard that would see users seeking to verify their identity issue a new "Identity contract" that contains a valid claim issued by the platform they are seeking to verify themselves on.

The issuer would provide the user with a cryptographic signature proving that the user controls a particular email, phone number or, according to Vogelsteller, address or biometric data, which is added to the identity contract.

In the case of a dApps Airbnb equivalent, a user would be able to attempt to rent a property via a listing contract, at which point the listing contract would investigate the user's identity for a claim issued by the "AirBnB" dApps.

The ERC725 could potentially create an ecosystem in which contracts are able to accept claims issued by virtually any dApps or blockchain platform, facilitating distributed, interoperable identity across any project.

With countries such as Thailand already investigating blockchain-based identity management, a future in which all identity management occurs on-chain is not so far away.