Blockchain Single Sign On
In blockchain, Single Sign-On (SSO) is a decentralized authentication technique that removes the need to generate unique identities and passwords for each platform by enabling users to access various decentralized applications (dApps) or services with a single identity or login. By lowering the quantity of passwords users must remember, it seeks to improve user experience, expedite the authentication process, and maybe increase security.
Core Concept and Contrast with Traditional SSO
In conventional systems, centralized identity providers (IdPs) like Google or Facebook are usually in charge of SSO. An IdP issues a token or assertion to users upon login, which service providers accept to allow access.
Blockchain-based SSO, on the other hand, moves away from this platform-driven, centralized identity model and towards a user-driven, decentralized one. In order to give consumers direct control over their own data and credentials, SSO is intended to be built using blockchain-based identity standards, digital identity protocols, and cryptographic wallets. It gives users more control, security, and mobility over their digital identity by substituting a cryptographic key for the conventional username and password.
How Blockchain SSO Works (Simplified Flow)
The method usually includes these steps:
- Users create encrypted wallets or Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) as reusable identities.
- The user authenticates once, usually by signing a message with their wallet, eliminating the need for a login and password.
- After proof of authentication is sent by an SSO protocol, the user receives a verifiable token or signature.
- As each application validates the signed credential or token, the user can subsequently access several dApps or services using the same identity.
- Verifiable Credentials (VCs) are an optional feature that enables users to provide evidence (such as “over 18,” “citizen,” or “verified human”) without disclosing sensitive information.
Benefits of Blockchain-based SSO
Blockchain SSO has a number of noteworthy benefits.
- User sovereignty: Users control their data and identity. They determine what to share and with whom.
- Increased Security: No central password database reduces significant data breaches. Public-key cryptography is safer than username/password systems for authentication. It reduces weak or reused passwords and conventional systems’ single point of failure. Blockchain’s immutability enables secure user authentication and access. This addresses common weak passwords, new viruses, phishing, and sophisticated hacking.
- Interoperability changes platform identity. Any product or service that supports decentralized identity protocols can use DIDs and VCs, making online life more flexible.
- ZK-proofs enable users prove “I am over 21” without revealing their birthday.
- Resilience: Blockchain’s decentralization strengthens identity against censorship and outages. The blockchain’s distributed database copies and reconciles data across compute nodes, prohibiting theft, modification, and corruption.
- Login is easier with fewer usernames and passwords.
- Lower IT Costs: By streamlining user administration for businesses, it may lower the expenses related to overseeing several authentication solutions.
- Centralized Access Control: Even in a decentralized framework, it enables centralized control over user access to blockchain apps and services.
Real-World Use Cases
Blockchain SSO has numerous real-world uses in a variety of industries:
- Web3 dApps: Sign-in with Ethereum (SIWE), for instance, allows users to sign into several Web3 dApps using a single wallet.
- Decentralized Social Profiles: Using a single identity to connect social profiles on several networks.
- Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs): To access forums, cast a vote, and get rewards inside DAOs, use a single wallet login.
- Gaming: Keeping one identity consistent across several blockchain games.
- Reusing validated credentials, such as degrees or licenses, in the healthcare or educational sectors.
- Enterprise Solutions: To control access to its internal blockchain network and other cloud-based apps, a business may employ a blockchain-based SSO solution.
Challenges
Blockchain SSO implementation has drawbacks despite its advantages:
- Complexity: Compared to conventional SSO solutions, blockchain-based SSO may be more difficult to deploy.
- Scalability: It can be difficult to make sure the blockchain infrastructure can effectively manage the volume of user authentication requests.
- Standardization: To guarantee interoperability across various systems, the way blockchain is utilised for SSO must be standardized.
Spin backup’s Approach to Blockchain SSO
A Blockchain Single Sign On solution from Spin backup serves as a security link between cloud service providers and users. It creatively blends the benefits of blockchain technology and certificate authentication.
The main ideas of their platform are:
- The required authorizations and API access to cloud resources are supplied by public cloud providers.
- Importantly, the blockchain network stores the checksum of the end user certificate needed to obtain access, making it impossible for an attacker to fake the certificate. This fixes a serious flaw in conventional certificate authentication that allows attackers to try to fake root certificate authority.
- The blockchain SSO from Spinbackup’s Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) serves as a link between the blockchain network and the public cloud vendor’s rights, confirming access.
Enabling Spinbackup Blockchain SSO is a straightforward process:
- Spinbackup is authorised by the G Suite administrator to access their G Suite account.
- Organizations do not need to provision their own Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) because Spin backup manages the issuance of an X.509 certificate with user profile data for Google G Suite.
- This created certificate’s checksum is computed and sent to the blockchain network.
- To ensure that no user-specific information pertaining to the certificate is stored on Spinbackup’s servers, any user-specific data used to generate the certificate is thereafter removed.
- The user can get secure certificates in a matter of seconds and install them on their device or browser.
- After the certificate is installed, public cloud services can be accessed without the need for passwords.
By using the decentralized structure of the blockchain network to maintain certificate checksums, this method greatly improves identity security by making it very difficult to alter or fabricate certificates.
Consider blockchain SSO as an internationally recognised digital passport that is impossible to falsify. Your blockchain identity functions as a single, extremely secure cryptographic passport, eliminating the need for separate entrance visas for each country (service or dApp) you visit, which could be lost or duplicated. The border control (the dApp or service) can quickly and securely verify your identity and any required attributes (such as being “over 18”) without ever seeing the sensitive information inside your passport when you want to enter a new “country,” all to a global, immutable registry (the blockchain).