DecentraID: A Blockchain-Based Self-Sovereign Identity System with Enhanced Privacy and Social Recovery

Abstract

Digital identity systems continue to depend on centralized authorities that store, validate, and often monetize user data, creating persistent concerns related to privacy leakage, identity fraud, platform lock-in, and single points of failure. This paper presents DecentraID, a decentralized self-sovereign identity framework that combines Ethereum smart contracts, IPFS-based storage, client-side authenticated encryption, and W3C-aligned credential workflows to give users direct control over their digital identity records. In the proposed design, sensitive profile data and credential payloads are encrypted locally using AES-GCM before being uploaded to IPFS, while only content identifiers and verification metadata are anchored on-chain. The architecture also incorporates issuer-managed verifiable credentials and a guardian-based social recovery mechanism to reduce the risk of permanent identity loss caused by wallet or private-key compromise. Unlike conventional identity platforms that concentrate trust in a single provider, DecentraID distributes trust across cryptographic proofs, decentralized storage, and programmable smart contracts. Functional validation of the prototype on Ethereum Sepolia demonstrates secure profile registration, encrypted data retrieval, credential issuance and verification, revocation handling, and threshold-based recovery. The study shows that decentralized identity can be implemented in a way that is practical, privacy-aware, and extensible for academic, organizational, and e-governance use cases.

Introduction

The text discusses the growing importance of decentralized digital identity systems and introduces DecentraID, a self-sovereign identity (SSI) framework designed to improve privacy, security, and user control. Traditional digital identity systems are highly centralized, requiring users to depend on organizations that store sensitive personal data, making them vulnerable to breaches, misuse, and lack of portability.

SSI addresses these issues by allowing users to own and manage their identities through decentralized identifiers (DIDs), verifiable credentials (VCs), and cryptographic verification. Blockchain technology provides a secure and tamper-resistant foundation for these systems, while off-chain storage solutions such as IPFS help maintain privacy and scalability by storing encrypted identity data outside the blockchain.

DecentraID combines Ethereum smart contracts, IPFS, client-side encryption, and W3C-compliant verifiable credentials to create a secure and user-centric identity management system. A key feature of the platform is guardian-based social recovery, which allows users to regain account access if they lose their wallet credentials, improving usability and reliability.

The literature review highlights existing research on decentralized identity, focusing on interoperability, privacy preservation, credential verification, and recovery challenges. While many SSI systems support decentralized identifiers and credentials, they often lack strong recovery methods, encrypted storage, and practical usability.

The proposed architecture uses a layered design consisting of a React-based user interface, AES-GCM encryption, IPFS storage, Ethereum blockchain governance, and verification mechanisms. The system supports identity creation, credential issuance and verification, revocation management, and secure social recovery workflows.

Conclusion

This paper presented DecentraID, a blockchain-based self-sovereign identity system designed to improve privacy, portability, and user control in digital identity management. By combining Ethereum smart contracts with IPFS-backed encrypted storage, the framework separates public verifiability from private data confidentiality. Its support for W3C-aligned credentials and guardian-based social recovery makes the system more usable than many minimal blockchain identity prototypes. The implementation demonstrates that decentralized identity can move beyond theory when identity ownership, credential workflows, storage efficiency, and recovery are treated as an integrated design problem. For academic and institutional settings in particular, DecentraID offers a practical foundation for secure and portable digital identity.

References

[1] A. Giannopoulou, “A Critical Approach of Self-Sovereign Identity,” Digital Society, vol. 2, no. 3, 2023. doi: 10.1007/s44206-023-00049-z. [2] R. Dutra Garcia, G. Ramachandran, K. Dunnett, R. Jurdak, C. Ranieri, B. Krishnamachari, and J. Ueyama, “A Survey of Blockchain-Based Privacy Applications: An Analysis of Consent Management and Self-Sovereign Identity Approaches,” arXiv:2411.16404, 2024. [3] W3C, “Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0,” W3C Recommendation, Jul. 19, 2022. [4] C. Mazzocca, A. Acar, S. Uluagac, R. Montanari, P. Bellavista, M. Conti, “A Survey on Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials,” arXiv:2402.02455, 2024. [5] IPFS Docs, “What is IPFS?” and “Content Identifiers (CIDs),” Protocol Labs Documentation, accessed Mar. 2026. [6] J. Benet, “IPFS – Content Addressed, Versioned, P2P File System,” arXiv:1407.3561, 2014. [7] W3C, “Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0,” W3C Recommendation, May 15, 2025. [8] J. Zhang, D. Xiang, K. Xu, and G. Zhang, “ERC-7093: Social Recovery Interface,” Ethereum Improvement Proposal, May 2023. [9] R. A. Pava-Diaz, J. Gil-Ruiz, and D. A. Restrepo, “Self-sovereign identity on the blockchain: contextual analysis and quantification of SSI principles implementation,” Frontiers in Blockchain, 2024. doi: 10.3389/fbloc.2024.1443362. [10] W. Chan, “Blockchain-Assisted Self-Sovereign Identities on Education: Opportunities and Challenges,” Blockchains, vol. 3, no. 1, 2025. doi: 10.3390/blockchains3010003. [11] Y.-H. Hsieh, Y.-H. Hsiao, and C.-M. Chen, “Self-Sovereign Identity-Based E-Portfolio Ecosystem,” Applied Sciences, vol. 14, no. 22, 2024. doi: 10.3390/app142210361. [12] D. Naicker, M. Gerber, and E. van der Poll, “Challenges of user data privacy in self-sovereign identity implementations,” Frontiers in Blockchain, 2024. doi: 10.3389/fbloc.2024.1374655. [13] J. He, X. Wei, and X. Liu, “Supervised and revocable decentralized identity privacy protection based on blockchain,” Security and Safety, 2024. [14] NIST, “Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation: Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) and GMAC,” SP 800-38D; revision notice, Mar. 2024.

Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Anshita Rathore, Aayush Chouhan, Balraj Singh Randhawa, Mohd Affan Siddiqui, Dr. Abha Choubey. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.