A Decentralized Identity and Trust Management Platform Using Blockchain for Cross-Domain Authentication

Abstract

As digital ecosystems expand, secure and interoperable identity management across organizational boundaries has become increasingly important. This paper presents a blockchain-based platform for decentralized identity and trust management to support cross-domain authentication and authorization among autonomous organizations, such as government agencies and academic institutions. The proposed platform employs a consortium blockchain as a tamper-resistant credential and policy repository, enabling each organization to administer its own credentials while supporting verifiable identity sharing across domains. On-ledger trust relationships and authorization policies allow trusted interactions without relying on centralized identity authorities or pre-established bilateral agreements. A prototype was implemented using Hyperledger Fabric and evaluated in a multi-domain setting. The results demonstrate correct authentication behavior, sub-second authentication latency, measurable transaction throughput, and effective revocation propagation. Additional experiments under multi-domain and concurrent authentication workloads show that the platform preserves consistent authentication outcomes while maintaining latency within practical bounds. The proposed approach can be applied to multi-institutional environments, such as inter-university digital services, cross-agency e-government systems, and collaborative research infrastructures, where secure identity sharing and cross-domain access control are required.