PART II: IDENTITY MATTERS — Self-custody within a legal framework continued!

Why decentralised identity protection will be key for driving Web3 innovation and digital ownership!

The evolution of digital Identity technology is accelerating at a fast pace, and we need to get it right! With Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) we are on the right track. SSI is a model for digital identity management that gives us — the individual — autonomous control over the personal information we use to prove who we are to third parties on the digital grid.

‘Sovereign’ (also autonomous, free or independent): meaning not subject to the rule or control of another.

SSI will democratise ownership and recreate a level playing field on the digital grid.

SSI gives everyone the right to exist — every individual must be able to exist in the digital world without the need of a third party.

SSI is decentralised — in contrast to centralised identity management, you are the boss.

SSI gives back individual control — you own your identity and give explicit permission for a third party to use or access your data.

SSI is persistent — lives with you from birth to death.

SSI is portable — accessible to you wherever you are at any time, across any geographic border.

SSI is blockchain enabled.

In a nutshell, SSI is about much more than privacy, security, trust, or transparency. The model by its very nature strives to transfer our real-world concepts of social practices and business functions into the digital world while eroding cultural and economic friction, especially in an age where technology has become integrated into every facet of our life.

Most individuals have credentials in the physical world from the moment they are born, the birth certificate, passport; later in life we hold bank cards, club memberships, buy concert or plane tickets, etc, all of which are credentials that prove that we are who we claim to be or that we are allowed to do what it says on the ticket; and the global standard for these credentials is paper.

So, these pieces of paper (or plastic) that we usually or partly carry around in our wallets, are an integral part of our daily lives; an attestation, proof of qualification or competence issued by governments or other authorities to us or requested by us at any time we need them. The problem though is that these credentials don’t work online.

The internet protocol (commonly known as TCP/IP) identifies machines, not the people and organisations running these machines; and the absence of reliable digital identifiers is one of the primary sources of identity theft and cybercrime. As a result, we are experiencing a global digital identity crisis that SSI aims to solve.

Imagine if you had digital credentials like your paper ones and you could carry them with you, look after them and present them whenever needed to anyone for whatever purpose it may be just like you can with paper credentials in the physical world but with cryptographic superpowers.

But can it be done?

Self-Sovereign Identity, including all its technical building blocks (decentralised identifiers, verifiable credentials, digital agents and wallets), replicates and preserve the fundamental rights on which modern society was built, where the basic structure of trust is established by a model usually referred to as the “Trust Triangle”. Something that wasn’t solvable before the decentralised blockchain revolution.

While today’s centralised digital identity systems unlock improved user experience and increased security on the web, they are inherently misaligned with how individuals and their relationships function in the real world and don’t reflect values such as self-ownership and human rights, which in the West we so often take for granted.

In order to design digital identity systems that erode social friction and create global wealth, cultural differences also need to be taken into account. Human identity and trust can be both universal and culture-specific interpretations, and technologies built to model such identity or trust structures should promise to be inclusive of all; and SSI might just be the “have your cake and eat it” solution.

Next week we will elaborate on the individual building blocks of SSI and how they tackle the difficulty of establishing trust in human interactions on the digital grid to reflect the real-world model of social and commercial interactions (the Trust Triangle).

Did you miss PART I to this? — read here.