German government's blockchain-based ID wallet removed from app stores shortly after launch due to major issues

Shortly before the federal election, the German government launched the app "ID Wallet". It was supposed to store driver's licenses and other identification documents, and allow them to be shared with authorized parties (like the police, or during hotel check-ins). Because the distributed ledger back-end met neither basic EU security standards, nor handled more than a few thousand users (in total, not per second), the launch failed and private data stored in the app would have been exposed to identity theft. FOIA requests revealed that the project developers had known about the shortcomings of their design months in advance. The German Federal Office for Information Security wrote in a report, "[the use of the blockchain-based solution] significantly increases the complexity and, as a result, the fundamental susceptibility to security gaps in the entire system if the benefits are unclear".