Decentralized Identity Management on Ripple: A Conceptual Framework for High-Speed, Low-Cost Identity Transactions in Attestation-Based Attribute-Based Identity
Ruwanga Konara, Kasun De Zoysa, Asanka Sayakkara
TL;DR
This paper proposes a conceptual Attestation-Based Attribute-Based Decentralized Identity Management (ABABDIDM) framework on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), leveraging a dedicated EVM-compatible sidechain and cross-chain bridging to achieve high-throughput, low-cost identity attestations. It defines a three-party IDM model (user, issuer, verifier) and introduces two smart contracts (Issuer and Verifier) that manage attestations, coupling attestation issuance with a small XRPL transfer ($0.3$) to ensure finality, while preserving privacy by disclosing only attested thresholds rather than full attributes. The framework uses IdXRP, a wrapped XRP on the sidechain, and a governance-led trust-anchor model to support cross-chain verification, revocation, and lifecycle management, backed by Ripple’s ecosystem advantages such as Hooks, multi-signature capabilities, and banking partnerships. Through two illustrative scenarios, the authors show how attestations enable privacy-preserving attribute verification for regulatory and financial services, enabling potential applications in instant lending, cross-border compliance, and tokenized financial instruments, while acknowledging the need for prototype development and formal security analyses in future work.
Abstract
Recent years have seen many industrial implementations and much scholastic research, i.e., prototypes and theoretical frameworks, in Decentralized Identity Management Systems (DIDMS). It is safe to say that Attestation-Based Attribute-Based Decentralized IDM (ABABDIDM) has not received anywhere near the same level of attention in the literature as general Attribute-Based DIDMs (ABDIDM), i.e, decentralized Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC). The use of decentralization, i.e., DIDM, is to improve upon the security and privacy-related issues of centralized Identity Management Systems (IDM) and Attribute-Based IDMs (ABIDM). And blockchain is the framework used for decentralization in all these schemes. Many DIDMs - even ABDIDMs - have been defined on popular blockchains such as Hyperledger, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. However, despite the characteristics of Ripple that makes it appealing for an ABIDM, there is a lack of research to develop an Identity Management System (IDMS) on Ripple in literature. We have attempted to conceptualize an ABABDIDM on Ripple.