dARK: A decentralized blockchain implementation of ARK Persistent Identifiers

We present the first proof of concept of a technology that could be the base for a low-cost and decentralized service to assign/resolve persistent ARK identifiers. This is the foundation for an open and community driven project fostered by IBICT (Brazil) and LA Referencia/RedCLARA with the long term objective of provide an open/non-centralized unique/deduplicated persistent identifier factory and resolution service for the global Open Science ecosystem based on permissioned public blockchain technology. Some of the motivations for this work are: (i) The need not only of persistent but unique/deduplicated identifiers in order to build better research graphs, indicators and research assessment inputs; (ii) Lack of PID coverage on Global South repositories mainly because of the costs that those services represents for the institutions; and (iii) Most persistent identifier systems are based on centralized models, depending on few agencies that support the service infrastructure. ARK identifier has emerged as a viable alternative low-cost solution due to the possibility of implementing internal providers for the global resolver. dArk is an ARK implementation based on institutional blockchain nodes, the data is owned, stored and controlled by no one organization but by all participants in a "public good" network.