Tech giants and blockchain firms have joined a new consortium DIF, which is an open source decentralized identity ecosystem for people, organizations, and devices that enables a new class of apps and services.

The consortium members include Microsoft, Accenture, Gem, IOTA, BigChain DB, Tierion, Blockstack, Netki, among others. The decentralized identities are anchored by blockchain ID’s, linked to zero-trust datastores that are universally discoverable, the consortium website stated.

The announcement of the group was made during the annual event of CoinDesk ‘Consensus 2017 conference’.

“These identifiers and names are not just for people. It's for companies and devices. The blockchain provides a root of trust that isn't controlled by any one organization,” Wayne Vaughan, CEO of member startup Tierion, explained, as reported by CoinDesk. “Our real competition isn't with each other, but with the big identifiers in the world: Facebook, Apple, Twitter. They control all the identity information that we have.”

According to the consortium’s github site, DIF will be developing specifications, protocols, formats, and implementations for cross-chain rooting, indexing, and resolution of decentralized identifiers and names. This will address how people, devices and other entities are identified absent a centrally owned registry.

Also, in order to address attestations between groups of individuals and businesses, DIF intends to equip the decentralized identity community with the protocols, tools, and implementations that are needed to create and validate identity attestations.

“DIF will endeavor to anchor its activities in the use cases and requirements it observes and gathers from users and consumers of the specifications, protocols, and implementations it develops, DIF’s Github stated.