DID Discussion

Notes on Angie's Twitter space on Decentralized Identies and Personal Datastore

John Andersen
John Andersen

2022-03-02 DID Discussion

  • https://twitter.com/techgirl1908/status/1498402992260890628
  • https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/
  • Personal datastore standard
    • Will enhance ability to store application data using user keypairs to record metadata on chain and decrypt using private key
  • Microsoft is integrating DID support to Active Directory
  • Privacy preserving angle is only useful once you have conveyance
    • People will hand over stuff t
    • Need things to work in browser with no plugins, directly to get mass adoption
  • Google has moved to a system called Macaroons
  • System that is like OAuth but with fewer steps
    • Having it all work locally and then automatically work across services without prenegotiated tokens is ideal
    • https://ucan.xyz/
  • Change management and inclusivity
    • What if people don't have smart phones or electricity?
      • What if you have certain data encrypted on terminals
        • Very difficult problem, Microsoft was not able to solve it
      • In Kim's mind this is the biggest risk
        • Can't assume mobile phone, bandwidth
        • Systems are not designed with reliance in mind, we need to provide the layer of resiliency
        • Want to think about distributed systems as a layer that can be used to bootstrap trust
        • Need to ensure people can use the systems we are designing
  • Where are the self issued routing tables?
  • How come we don't have hundreds of demos?
    • Why are we waiting for all the specs to be approved?
      • We are not, we are building in parallel
      • We want feedback
      • Standards help us with interoperability tests
      • How do you know that everyone is interpreting the standards in the same way
    • What are the biggest blockers preventing demos?
  • ION has been out for a year as 1.0
  • Today, can I used DID for auth?
    • OIDC for SSI approaches
      • Three specs
        • Issuing ID in wallet, claims can be issued to
          • Functions as DID
          • Can participate in different wallet central protocols around authentication
  • Get involved
    • Join WC3 credentials community
    • Join Decentralized Identify Foundation
      • Membership required for orgs of over 1000 people
      • Talked to Ned Smith about our involvement
  • Use cases
    • DIDs enable change of ownership
      • Lifecycle concerns are answered
      • When you need to prove anything about yourself, it's portable, you know who's getting your data
      • Claim can be anything
        • Captures some skill about a person, or maybe some attribute
        • Can be issued by a peer
          • That's verifiable
          • Up to consumer of that information what they want to do with it
          • Remove gatekeeping
            • You have to have claim X from A, we'll maybe I'll accept Y + Z from B instead
    • Every time you author work then you should link it to your DID
    • Helps with API flexibility / interoperability between applications
  • Identity Hubs and DIF
    • TBDecks
  • Verity Decntrialized Identity
  • Verifiable Crednetials
    • Allow people to move their data with you
  • Brooklyn Zelenka