Centralized Versus Decentralized Digital Identity Architectures: Simulation Models of Data Exchange

In order to utilize big data generated from distributed cloudbased services, a digital ID is required to link between data and its subjects. Decentralized Identifiers (DID) have been developed to manage data from various services with privacy protection. We analyzed two ID architectures, DID and centralized ID (CID), with simulation models to evaluate the efficiency of ID architectures. In a monopoly market where there is no competition between ID providers, there is no difference between DID and CID. However, if there are multiple ID providers without interoperability, service providers have access to more data in the DID architecture compared to CID. However, this result was affected by the design of the model without ID federation technologies. Currently, service providers can receive data from many third-party services with the ID federation standard. Also, the simulation results that DID is very efficient for data distribution should be carefully interpreted by considering the upcoming costs for implementation.