The accredited certificate is going to be abolished, after 21 years since its start. Blockchain companies with DID projects have been preparing for this moment. The industry is expecting the new amendment will bring positive changes.
The ‘digital signature law amendment’ which has a clause to get rid of the accredited certificate been approved by the court and will be in effect starting in November. According to the changes, the ‘accredited’ characteristics will be gone and all certificates will be simply ‘digital.’ Therefore, the overall concept of accredited certificate will be replaced with integrated digital certificate that combines both publicly and private signatures.
As the certificate is expected to be no longer in use in the near future, all other digital private certificates are expected to be actively used. Especially, companies that have been developing DID technology are positive that their DID will be the core replacement for the old certificate system.
An industry representative says “sure, we’ve got bio-verification and some other methods of privately developed certificates, however, blockchain with the advantages of distributed database is expected to dominate the market”
DID does not require additional authentication once it is certified the first time, which is a huge advantage. Unlike other certificates, any organizations with blockchain can use DID without any additional verification.
One of the companies that will benefit most from this major shift is ICONLOOP, which plans to provide DID to the financial sector. ICONLOOP built ‘MyID Alliance’ last year; because the project itself was started with the special help attuned to the financial sector, it is a DID that is specialized for the financial institutions.
Considering the majority of uses for accredited certificate is within the financial sector, the company is excited for the change. The director of ICONLOOP YooJin Son said “through the special treatment we received, we can be the sole domestic DID provider to financial sector” and that “since you don’t have to do any additional verification or logins, it will be very convenient to use.” She also mentioned that “since the certificates that are recognized by the finance sector is supposed to be the top-notch, we expect to expand our customer base to non-financial sector too.”
Other organizations that are within the DID alliance are going to benefit from the end of accredited certificate as well. RaonSecure, which is a part of DID alliance, has developed Omnione DID which is already being used by Military Manpower Administration. As of right now, it’s possible to simply log in with convenient RaonSecure’s DID technology on the MMA website.
The representative of RaonSecure said “thanks to this new law amendment, we are expecting a huge development of the various verification services as such biometric-authentication and DID, as well as a variety of fintech services in both financial and public customer-oriented authentication services,” and added that “contrary to some concern, DID has the advantage of the best security measures of blockchain, which puts it at the top of the list.”
However, it’s a far road ahead before DID can actually be implemented for use. DID hasn’t been officially approved by the government as a verification method. In order for DID to be approved and be implemented, we will need some regulation changes.
A representative of blockchain industry mentioned that “businesses that are not authorized by the national administrations as an identity veritication agency cannot provide the services using DID,” and that “in order for DID to be used earnestly, we need some of the relevant laws changed first.”
