by Alex Ortiz
***Musings, thoughts, ideas, and other small meanderings about identity, access management, decentralized identifiers, self-sovereignty and related topics.***
Driver’s Licenses
My Washington State driver’s license has 15 attributes on it, my name, date of birth, and status as an organ donor among them. The license cost me $54 and is good for five years, equating to 1,080 cents annually, or three cents per day. The most common use of this ID, for me, is proving that I’m over 21 (really a combination of four claims: the license is not fake, the license is not expired, the license belongs to me, and the date-of-birth field proving I’m over 21).
The second most common use of my license, due to the amount of flying I do, is to prove that I am the same person an airline ticket was issued to, essentially a matching exercise involving a different combination of claims. It would be interesting to reconsider the economics of that three cents per day, because on the days on which I do not drive, do not need to prove my age, and do not fly, the operating value of my license is different than on the days when I do those things. Today I pay $.03 per day to essentially rent the license, despite its value wavering as my goings-ons do too.
There should be a mechanism to pay for my verified credentials, like date-of-birth (Proof-of-Age) or Proof-of-Name, on an as-needed basis, perhaps via micro-transactions, as well as the means to digitally transfer them from issuers to recipients.
