Despite the WorldCoin and biometric privacy concerns, the citizens of Buenos Aires will soon have a new digital identity service making use of blockchain. An innovative step to store and protect user data on the cloud. So you can recover biometric data without government control.
Buenos Aires’ “QuarkID” will store personal data.
Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, has unveiled a groundbreaking digital identity system leveraging blockchain technology. Starting in October, the city’s 15 million residents will have access to their identity documents through a digital wallet. Initially, essential documents like birth and marriage certificates, as well as income and academic verifications, can be retrieved digitally.
The project is all about QuarkID, a digital identity protocol developed by Web3 firm Extrimian. This is supported by zkSync Era, an Ethereum scaling protocol employing zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups), ensuring secure validation without revealing specific information.
In response, Guillermo Villanueva, CEO of Extrimian, noted the significance of this development for the future of secure and efficient government services in Latin America. The stored data will be self-sovereign, giving citizens control over the distribution of their credentials.
Buenos Aires Takes the Lead in Latin America
Recently, Diego Fernandez, the city’s secretary of innovation, highlighted Buenos Aires’ pioneering role in Latin America and aims to build a digital identity framework as a public resource. He underlined how Buenos Aires is setting a gold standard for other countries in the region, showcasing the advantages of blockchain technology for citizens.
An Innovation or a Data Breach?
Yes, you got it right we are talking about Worldcoin the one-of-a-kind digital ID initiative in Argentina. Led by OpenAI’s co-founder Sam Altman, this project has raised many eyebrows thanks to its privacy concerns, particularly regarding its use of retinal scans for user verification. Beyond Argentina, Worldcoin’s launch in July has sparked scrutiny in Europe and Africa.
Kenya temporarily halted WorldCoin to assess its impact on privacy. There are multiple concerns about the security of iris scan data, despite assurances that it’s deleted. Questions linger about potential data sale or surveillance use. Regulators in France and the UK are investigating WorldCoin for potential violations of users’ legal rights, raising concerns for privacy-focused fintech solutions like QuarkID.
What next?
In such a state Argentina’s plan to use this controversial technology is raising many doubts about its usability. In broader terms, it can be seen as the city’s broader vision that can embrace health data and payment management into the digital identity platform, with plans to expand the blockchain-based solution nationwide by 2023.