Input Output (IOHK), the company that is behind the Cardano cryptocurrency, has announced that it is tied up with the Ethiopian government for the launching of a National ID System that would be based on blockchain.
This was announced by the Ethiopian Education Minister who said that the blockchain-based system would be used for bringing in a national id system especially for students.and it is expected that this would be the largest use-case for blockchain ever, at this time. The project is expected to go live in the third quarter of 2021 when around 5 million students and 750,000 teachers are expected to come under this new ID system.
“It’s our intention to compete amongst others for the whole national ID system, which is about 110 million people,” said Charles Hoskinson as he looks at this smaller implementation of the ID system among students as a pathway to get into a complete national ID system covering the entire population in due course of time. The company has been placing a lot of focus on the usage of the blockchain systems for national ids, especially in the African region where tracking of individuals and services have been pretty poor traditionally and hence they provide a good opportunity as well as challenges for any company that wants to achieve this.
Such coverage would also help in financial inclusion as blockchain technology can be used to even reach the unbanked and bring them under the banking services. This is another aspect that the company, which is behind Cardano, has been working on over the last few years as it looks to create a microchip to help people perform payments without the use of the internet. This would greatly help to bring users, even in very remote parts of the world like some parts of Africa, into the banking system and remove the dependency of financial services delivery on the internet.
The prices of Cardano has shot up following the news and now it is the third biggest cryptocurrency in terms of market value as investors realise that, unlike Bitcoin, Cardano does have a real-life use behind the system and with Cardano already very far ahead in its implementation of the ID system and considering the potential uses of such systems, the IOHK company seems to be on a very good playing field and is primed to grow in the coming months.
