Buenos Aires has become the first city in the world to launch a blockchain-based digital identity system for its residents. This initiative allows more than 3.6 million people to store more than 60 identification documents on the government-backed MiBA platform. Since Sam Altman's controversial Worldcoin project emerged last year, the Web3 community has been abuzz with discussions about using blockchain-based identification systems to verify real humans in response to the rise of bots.
The Buenos Aires government's initiative seeks to provide residents with a new level of privacy and security for the digital handling of sensitive documents, Argentine publication Ambito said in a report this week.
Blockchain networks are seen as a potential alternative to Web2 servers, which store data in small blocks distributed across the network. This decentralized structure makes data more secure as hackers cannot easily compromise it in a single attack. Additionally, information stored on the blockchain is permanent and unalterable, adding a layer of transparency to data management.
In Buenos Aires, MiBA app users have been assigned decentralized digital identities, integrated with QuarkID wallets and powered by the Layer-2 ZKsync blockchain. The MiBA application is a native digital platform that allows residents to access documents and services from the city administration.
With this new feature, Buenos Aires now allows MiBA users to securely store birth, death, student, and marriage certificates, along with immunization records, gross income tax documents, and other official credentials.
“This initiative demonstrates the power of blockchain to revolutionize other use cases, such as government services, by allowing citizens to securely own their data,” the Ambito report quoted Diego Fernández, Secretary of Innovation and Digital Transformation of the City of Buenos Aires. saying.
The government of Argentina's capital sees this initiative as a key step in empowering residents to take ownership and responsibility for their personal data.
In addition to exploring blockchain use cases, Argentina is also investigating the use of Bitcoin. In May, Argentine officials began talks with their counterparts in El Salvador to learn from their strategies and experiences in adopting Bitcoin, which is currently trading at $67,300 (approximately Rs 56.5 lakh) according to CoinMarketCap.
With a gross domestic product (GDP) of approximately $640 billion, Argentina is one of the largest economies in Latin America, according to the World Bank. However, a previous Reuters report highlighted that Argentina's economy recorded a year-on-year decline of 8.4 percent in March, which may have led the country to explore diversifying its financial instruments by incorporating Bitcoin.
Specifically, Argentina's central bank had prohibited banks and financial institutions from offering cryptocurrency-related services in May 2022.
While Argentina has already implemented blockchain-based digital IDs, third-party projects like World and Humanity Protocol are working to have people verified as real humans on global blockchain networks.
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