MicroStrategy Announces Decentralized Identity Solution on Bitcoin Blockchain

During a notable presentation at the MicroStrategy World conference in Las Vegas, Michael Saylor, co-founder of MicroStrategy, announced the launch of MicroStrategy Orange, a revolutionary decentralized identity protocol. This open-source solution, shared on Github, aims to fortify digital identity management using the robust security features of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Saylor, speaking at both the annual conference and the Bitcoin For Corporations event, emphasized that decentralized identities could be created and verified independently, allowing for a tamper-proof system. The new protocol, MicroStrategy Orange, enables the storage and retrieval of decentralized identifiers (DIDs) using a modified Ordinals method, specifically designed for efficiency and scalability. It can process up to 10,000 identifiers in a single Bitcoin transaction.

The technical components of the platform include the Orange Service, Orange SDK, and pre-packaged Orange Applications. These tools allow organizations to issue DIDs to their employees and integrate these capabilities into both mobile and desktop environments. An example already in use is “Orange for Outlook,” an application that integrates digital signatures into emails to verify the sender’s identity accurately.

Cezary Raczko, MicroStrategy’s executive vice president of engineering, explained that the system is hosted on a service cloud, which helps users deploy applications and manage identifiers effortlessly. By using email verification as an example, Raczko highlighted how public and private keys generated by MicroStrategy Orange are recorded on the blockchain, ensuring the authenticity of communications.

The introduction of MicroStrategy Orange also opens up possibilities for its use in various sectors including social media, e-commerce, and fintech. Users can verify identities on multiple platforms, potentially featuring an “orange check” for verified statuses, similar to existing social media verification systems.

Furthermore, this new protocol provides opportunities for verifying other important documents and records like text messages, college degrees, and medical records in a decentralized manner, anchored securely to the Bitcoin network.

Despite the company’s $53.1 million net loss reported in the first quarter, the unveiling of MicroStrategy Orange reflects a significant stride in combining the realms of digital identity with blockchain technology, showcasing MicroStrategy’s ongoing innovation in the blockchain space.