The evolution of online identity:
— Tykn (@Tykn_tech) October 27, 2020
1. Siloed Identity: All services hold your data.
2. Federated Identity: Brokers hold your data.
3. Self-Sovereign Identity: You hold your data.
The Internet was created without any way to identify the people who used it. The Internet was a network of machines. Consequently, all the identity in Internet protocols is designed to identify machines and services. People used the Internet through some institution (their company or university) and were part of that institution's administrative identity system. This can still be seen in the format of email addresses that identify both recipient and sender as someone@someplace. As the Internet grew to include people who weren't formally associated with an institution, every Web site and service created their own administrative identity domains. The result is the fractured plethora of identifiers, policies, and user experiences that constitute digital identity in 2019.
Abstract The desire for increased control over our identity has catapulted the idea of “self‐sovereign identity” into the forefront of digital identity innovation, yet the term lacks a rigorous definition beyond specific technical implementations1. This paper explores what self‐sovereign identity means independent of technology: what people need from independent identity capabilities. I want to understand how such a system enables both individuals whose identities are in play (subjects), as well as those who use those “identities” to correlate interactions across contexts (observers). I start with grounding individual sovereignty in the Enlightenment and identity in its core function of correlation, then propose core characteristics of a self‐sovereign identity system. My eventual goal is to model the technology‐independent requirements of a self‐sovereign solution suitable for realizing UN Sustainable Development Goal 16.9: “Providing every last person on the planet with a legal identity by 2030.”
We cannot decentralize many interesting systems without also decentralizing the identity systems upon which they rely. We're finally in a position to create truly decentralized systems for digital identity.+
We cannot decentralize many interesting systems without also decentralizing the identity systems upon which they rely. We're finally in a position to create truly decentralized systems for digital identity.
+The evolution of online identity:
— Tykn (@Tykn_tech) October 27, 2020
1. Siloed Identity: All services hold your data.
2. Federated Identity: Brokers hold your data.
3. Self-Sovereign Identity: You hold your data.