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Traditional authentication involves sharing a considerable amount of personal and identifying information. Usually, a single central authority controls the data of all their users. This creates a single point of failure and users typically have to relinquish control over their data. Therefore it is important to explore alternate authentication mechanisms to uphold data sovereignty. Data sovereignty describes forms of independence, control, and autonomy over digital data. Enforcing data sovereignty also requires independence from central authorities. This paper explores alternate decentralized authentication methods. It leverages Verifiable Credentials (VCs) which allow verification without needing to contact the issuer and self-sovereign identities in the form of Decentralized IDentifiers (DIDs). This paper aims to leverage the decentralized authentication supported by VCs and DIDs and provide two use cases that might explain how they could be used.
Though the basic concept of a ledger that anyone can view and verify has been around for quite some time, today’s blockchains bring much more to the table including a way to incentivize users. The coins given to the miner or validator were the first source of such incentive to make sure they fulfilled their duties. This thesis draws inspiration from other peer efforts and uses this same incentive to achieve certain goals. Primarily one where users are incentivised to discuss their opinions and find scientific or logical backing for their standpoint. While traditional chains form a consensus on a version of financial "truth", the same can be applied to ideological truths too. To achieve this, creating a modified or scaled proof of stake consensus mechanism is explored in this work. This new consensus mechanism is a Reputation Scaled - Proof of Stake. This reputation can be built over time by voting for the winning side consistently or by sticking to one’s beliefs strongly. The thesis hopes to bridge the gap in current consensus algorithms and incentivize critical reasoning.