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MicroStrategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, plans to launch a Bitcoin-based Decentralized Identity protocol dubbed ‘MicroStrategy Orange.’ This protocol adopts Ordinal-based inscriptions to store and retrieve information.
MicroStrategy Orange: MicroStrategy’s Bold Move Into Bitcoin-Based DIDs
MicroStrategy co-founder and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor announced the MicroStrategy Orange Decentralized Identity solution during the firm’s Bitcoin For Corporations conference on Tuesday.
According to Saylor, MicroStrategy Orange is open-source, not reliant on sidechains, and is capable of processing up to 10,000 decentralized identifiers in a single Bitcoin transaction. This system promises to streamline the adoption of Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) for organizations and people, creating a way to manage online identities securely and pseudonymously.
“The goal of this method is to deliver trustless, tamper-proof, and long-lived decentralized identities using only the public Bitcoin blockchain as a data source, while enabling full compatibility with the [DID-CORE] specification and forward compatibility for future extensions,” MicroStrategy said in an unofficial draft of the MicroStrategy Orange protocol shared on GitHub.
The decentralized identifiers will allow pseudonymity, similar to how real-world identities are not tied to Bitcoin addresses and transactions. The MicroStrategy Orange suite comprises the Orange Service for organizations to issue DIDs, the Orange SDK for developers, and Orange Applications for customization tools to incorporate services on mobile and desktop devices. One application already created by MicroStrategy is “Orange For Outlook,” which integrates digital signatures into emails to ensure recipients can verify the sender’s authenticity.
The onboarding process entails accepting an invitation email signed by MicroStrategy’s DID, which then generates a unique DID, a public and private key pair for the user. The user’s DID and public key are inscribed on the Bitcoin network, ensuring the data is permanent and tamper-proof.
MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin Journey And Strategic Timing
The launch of MicroStrategy Orange comes as the Virginia-based software company turned “Bitcoin development company” reported a $53.1 million net loss for the first quarter of 2024 — though the firm continued to stack more BTC in April. It’s worth noting that this financial report used the traditional accounting method and did not reflect the marked increase in the market value of the company’s Bitcoin holdings, which grew by 64% over the quarter.
According to MicroStrategy executive vice president of engineering Cezary Raczko, MicroStrategy Orange’s vision is to integrate DIDs on Bitcoin with a broader “verifiable credential ecosystem.” Looking ahead, MicroStrategy plans to extend MicroStrategy Orange applications to other messaging platforms, social media networks, and applications in the e-commerce, enterprise, and fintech industries.
Raczko noted a potential use case of the new protocol: DIDs could be used to verify user identities on social media platforms, possibly fostering a more secure, user-controlled, and decentralized way to issue and verify credentials.
The software company’s move into decentralized identity solutions marks a major pivot in its business strategy, leveraging its Bitcoin resources to innovate beyond mere BTC accumulation.
In April, meanwhile, MicroStrategy purchased 122 additional Bitcoin for $7.8 million — bringing its stash to 214,400 Bitcoin, or $12.5 billion worth at today’s prices.