Quick take:
- China’s Ministry of Public Security has teamed up with BSN to launch a decentralised ID system.
- The government will use blockchain technology for real-name identity verification of its 1.4 billion people.
- The announcement was made by BSN following a government rule change requiring social media influencers to display their real names.
China will use blockchain technology to verify the real-name identities of its 1.4 billion citizens. The Asian nation’s Ministry of Public Security has teamed up with Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), the country’s national-level blockchain ecosystem to develop a decentralised ID (DID) project called RealDID.
Launched in January 2022, the BSN is China’s answer to the global network of public blockchains and allows Chinese companies to explore blockchain-based opportunities without violating the government’s strict conditions.
This announcement comes following a government rule change that requires social media influencers to display their real names. According to the announcement by BSN, the RealDID enables anonymous registrations and log-ins to websites using decentralised ID addresses and private keys, which ensures personal information is not linked to business data and transactions.
In October, state media platform ChinaDaily reported that all the leading media platforms in China required social media influencers (those with more than 500,000 or 1 million followers) to publicly display their names.
According to the report, those platforms include “WeChat, Sina Weibo, video-sharing platforms Douyin and Kuaishou, YouTube-like Bilibili, and lifestyle-sharing platform Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book).”
China is renowned for being one of the most strict nations when it comes to crypto and blockchain technology. However, its strict regulations have not prevented it from becoming one of the most proactive in the space with some of its biggest cities including Beijing and Shanghai announcing ambitious plans for the metaverse and blockchain technology initiatives.
And again, though still under the strict regulations set by the government, China is claiming another first in the Web3 space. In the announcement, BSN called the RealDID the world’s first national-level real-name decentralized identity system.
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