Hitachi Research & Concodium Foundation Collaboration

Hitachi Research & Development and Concordium Foundation are set to revolutionise the crypto space with their collaborative venture—a "proof of technology" for a biometric crypto wallet, announced on 12 December.

In its early development stage, this wallet allows users to effortlessly generate seed words through fingerprints or facial scans, eliminating the need for memorisation or storage.

Biometric-Based Accounts

Incorporating Hitachi's Public Biometric Infrastructure (PBI) and Concordium network's self-sovereign identity framework, the collaborative project aims to establish biometric-based accounts.

Lars Seier Christensen, Founder of Concordium, said:

"One of the key enablers of large scale blockchain adoption is usability. We are determined to deliver a blockchain and cryptocurrency which is easy and safe to use for the benefit of all people. Biometrics from HITACHI built into the Concordium Wallet will make storing and using your tokens easy and safe,"

Users can regain access to their wallets through a biometric scan or by decrypting seed words using a key derived from the scan.

This dual-layered security ensures that unauthorised access is nearly impossible, requiring possession of the user's face or fingerprint.

The convenience of importing wallets into new devices by performing the scan adds an extra layer of user-friendly security.

Screenshot taken from Hitachi:

Hitachi's Innovative Approach

Hitachi's blog post on 25 March 2022, delves into the challenges faced during the development of the PBI.

Biometric data's inherent "fuzziness" posed a significant hurdle, prompting the team to employ "fuzzy key generation" and error correction technology.

This allows the extraction of feature vectors and the training of software to distinguish between scans, enhancing accuracy.

Unlike traditional crypto wallets that mandate seed word storage for backup, the Hitachi and Concordium biometric wallet offers a solution to this hurdle.

The approach, still in the proof-of-technology phase, aligns with the broader industry's quest for user-friendly solutions, alongside alternatives like multiparty-computation wallets and magic links.