The administration of United States President Joe Biden released a national standards strategy for critical and emerging technologies on May 4. The strategy stated that the U.S. would prioritize standards development in eight areas. Among the prioritized areas are “digital identity infrastructure and distributed ledger technologies, which increasingly affect a range of key economic sectors.”
“Distributed ledger” is a synonym for blockchain. Digital identity is “the unique representation of a subject engaged in an online transaction,” according to a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) document now under review. Digital identity is “unique in the context of a digital service, but does not necessarily need to uniquely identify the subject in all contexts,” the document added.