Microsoft is building a blockchain-based identity solution and plans to release it as open source on the technology giant's Azure cloud platform in the coming weeks.
The company made the announcement at the ID2020 conference in New York overnight alongside blockchain partner companies Blockstack Labs and ConsenSys.
The joint effort seeks to leverage the pair's existing Bitcoin and Ethereum-based identity solutions, Blockstack and uPort. Microsoft has an existing partnership with ConsenSys to offer Ethereum blockchain-as-a-service on Azure.
"Through this open source collaboration we intend to produce a cross-chain identity solution that can be extended to any future blockchains or new kinds of decentralised, distributed systems," Microsoft blockchain business strategist Yorke Rhodes III wrote in a blog post.
The trio intend for the platform to allow "people, products, apps and services to interoperate across blockchains, cloud providers and organisations" globally.
Microsoft said it would release an open source framework of the platform on Azure in the coming weeks.
"There are many questions that remain unanswered, but we can imagine a world where an individual can register their identity in a cross blockchain fashion, providing a single namespace for lookup regardless of blockchain of choice," Rhodes wrote.
"The self-sovereign nature of the solution enables many scenarios and becomes an asset owned by the individual, with attributes doled out on a time bounded basis only to parties with a need to know."
