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Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 (W3C draft)

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Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 (W3C draft)

#81

Post by contravariant »

uberdru wrote: post #29
jFriedensreich wrote: post #25

its really hard for me to understand this document, it would be nice to have a section with better examples and relationship to things that are more widely known. how does this relate to http and similar protocols to get the documents, how is it related to foaf+ssl and webid. how is the cryptography part really done and what is the relationship to pgp. i know all these things are completely different but i could not…

You should have a look at this doc: https://w3c.github.io/did-spec-registries/#did-methods Lots of concrete examples of how DIDs are being implemented. Ceramic is particularly interesting and advanced in their thinking.

> did:did:

Why on earth...

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 (W3C draft)

#82

Post by schoen »

nine_k wrote: post #75
schoen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> User: Site, look here, TTP which you trust says I'm legit. What does "legit" mean here? That's a really subtle issue for online identity applications.

It means: "TTP certifies that the user presenting identity X is indeed a user known to me, and is an acceptable user for the purposes that Site asked about: not a bot, not a spammer". The idea that TTP certifies User against particular requirements of Site, and gives User an identity which User can give to Site. TTP keeps the "real" identity of the user hidden from Site, replacing it with a temporary identity. TTP do…

> It means: "TTP certifies that the user presenting identity X is indeed a user known to me, and is an acceptable user for the purposes that Site asked about: not a bot, not a spammer".

How does the TTP know that the user isn't a spammer? Is there a backchannel for reidentifying users in case of abuse allegations? Does the TTP just refuse to issue credentials on behalf of the same user very frequently?

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 (W3C draft)

#84

Post by lalchandran »

jeremie wrote: post #27

This should be v0.1 based on the actual utility of the spec, just because it's been incubated for so long doesn't magically make it useful. DIDs are fundamentally antithetical to privacy and will only enable a deeper and more obscure level of tracking to all applications that use them. They were originally inspired for mapping public blockchain use-cases, but IMO personal identity and related keys should _never_ be p…

The assumption that DID has to be in a public chain is flawed. You should really look at DID use as a mechanism to decentralised the use of certificates. In my mind its definitely not not very different from PKI based certificates or any token based solution like OAuth. The difference is its potential to be decentralised.

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 (W3C draft)

#86

Post by mooreds »

7steps2much wrote: post #36
mooreds wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro... The European Commission is thinking about these problems too.

Correct me if I am wrong, but most of these services, such as the electronic signature, the electronic seals and the document exchange functionality outlined on that website are all dependent on a central authority are they not? Your signature certificate is issued by your government (or an organisation working for said government). The seals are created with certificates that are, once again, created by a central au…

Sorry, I should have clarified. The EU commission is focused on digital identity. I haven't dug deeply, but yes, I suspect that they are not as interested in decentralized identity (as the original link was).

> As mentioned, correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I can see all of these EU plans are basically just giving each EU citizen a cert that is issued by their government and some nice applications that build around those certs?

Sure, but wouldn't that ubiquity be a game changer?

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 (W3C draft)

#87

Post by AlexITC »

j-pb wrote: post #20

So what does this solve that a 128bit random value doesn't?

The DID could be updated to rotate keys without the need to notify anyone that is aware of it, with the random value, you need to share the new one with everybody, one implementation doing this is sidetree (https://identity.foundation/sidetree/spec/)

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 (W3C draft)

#88

Post by tatersolid »

dboreham wrote: post #49
uberdru wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put it slightly differently. The infrastructure went part of the way. It needed several more iterations. The UX, as you point out, never went anywhere. At least now people are getting comfortable with the idea of using a private key, even if no one has yet cracked the problem of crypto UX.

When I say it was implemented, I mean at Netscape around 1999 we had projects with banks where they issued smart cards, used with USB readers, that facilitated SSL client cert auth. Similar to today's FIDO2/U2F. I don't know why these schemes were never widely adopted but it wasn't because the implementation was lacking.

I used these all these systems, and even helped run a smart card conference back then.

The implementations were very lacking. As unusable as PGP for normal people. The banking industry took a hard pass on the whole thing for good reason.

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 (W3C draft)

#89

Post by infominer »

naravara wrote: post #39
jeremie wrote: post #27

This should be v0.1 based on the actual utility of the spec, just because it's been incubated for so long doesn't magically make it useful. DIDs are fundamentally antithetical to privacy and will only enable a deeper and more obscure level of tracking to all applications that use them. They were originally inspired for mapping public blockchain use-cases, but IMO personal identity and related keys should _never_ be p…

> DIDs are fundamentally antithetical to privacy and will only enable a deeper and more obscure level of tracking to all applications that use them. They were originally inspired for mapping public blockchain use-cases, but IMO personal identity and related keys should _never_ be put on a public chain, who thinks this could ever be a good idea or architecture? Functionally, how different would this be from the status…

DIDs make use of public key encryption, which does not require storing private data on a public chain to be useful. All that's needed is a public key directory for public entities, everything else can be verified based on said pubkey of those entities who issue credentials

a new identifier (pubkey) can be created for each organization you engage with

OPs argument seems based on imagination has nothing to do with how DIDs are meant to work

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