Something that has exercised everyone's mind since the mass adoption of the internet is verification of identity. Scammers, phishers and hackers all have ways of pretending to be someone they're not, and Blockchain technology may be one way of dealing with the problem. Reporting from the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit at Salt Lake City last week, a January 20th Fortune piece reviews a panel discussion by some of those involved on how the new tech might help.

Credit agencies today act as gatekeepers for financial transactions, with Facebook and its ilk governing social interactions with protocols on their networks. With Blockchain, a new generation of entrepreneurs is developing new solutions for the ID dilemma based on distributed ledger technology. They claim that by distributing databases across a global network of computing facilities, these tamper-resistant ledgers can help push back against the giant corporations who have come to monopolise control over people’s identities.

Rather than all ID data being centralised on a small collection of web servers, which can be controlled by one monolithic business (like Amazon, Visa, etc), the information dispersed on the Blockchain allows users more direct ownership and control of their own personal data. In order to do this, users participate with highly encrypted strings of code which act as keys, and are virtually foolproof against hacking assaults.