Microsoft and the The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) group on decentralized identifiers (DIDs) announced their project on the solutions for digital identities based on bitcoin's blockchain. Microsoft presented its Ion open-source project which tackles the question of digital identity in a decentralised way. Microsoft had earlier presented the idea of decentralised identity, a concept that will help users gain sovereignty over their digital data by controlling who can access it. Decentralised identities are the focus of the Microsoft's Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF).

The blockchain technology used in bitcoin (the first cryptocurrency) and its network is tested and known to be secure. Nevertheless, its network is not capable of performing high numbers of transactions, so Microsoft is proposing the solution in a so-called 'layer two' technology. This way, data will be anchored in the bitcoin's blockchain but the system would still be able to perform a high number of cryptographically approved transactions. The project is in its starting phase and testing will continue throughout 2019.