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Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Becomes a W3C Recommendation

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Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Becomes a W3C Recommendation

#71

Post by zdragnar »

oluoluoxenfree wrote: post #69
dragonwriter wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Funny to see Google and Mozilla siding on ethical issues It's not the first time Google and Mozilla sided together against the W3C on web standards, and the last notable time resulted, over time, in the W3C ultimately being displaced from any role in the HTML and DOM standards. The standards group that implementers listen to (which, for some reason, seems to be the one that listens to implementers, when there are c…

> It's not the first time Google and Mozilla sided together against the W3C on web standards, and the last notable time resulted, over time, in the W3C ultimately being displaced from any role in the HTML and DOM standards. By who?

WHATWG, though I recall that Apple and Opera were equally influential in the move.

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Becomes a W3C Recommendation

#72

Post by davidgerard »

jceb81 wrote: post #21
cplli wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lined up the tech in their products Link? Or an explanation as to what this means? > before it becomes available in a shop nearby Meaning what exactly? If you're saying Microsoft will implement DIDs, my question is, "Which of the 50+ methods?"

Here's the link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/solutions/... I haven't used their implementation yet but Microsoft initiated the did:ion method. I guess they'll support it :-D In general, the idea with DID methods is that you can support many methods without too much effort - for example the Universal Resolver implements already a good bunch: https://dev.uniresolver.io/ However, pointing in the di…

> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/solutions/...

So I went and had a look. There's no specification there that I could see - is there a more specific link I missed?

The white paper was issued in 2018. Is that what there is?

The product is Entra Verified ID - which turns out to be a directory service on Azure. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/veri...

This appears for all the world like a centralised product marketing itself as "decentralised".

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Becomes a W3C Recommendation

#73

Post by cowtools »

oofbey wrote: post #48
hosh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Google and Mozilla objected to this standard because the "method" is left undefined. W3C overruled them. https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/01/w3c_overrules_objecti...

The outcomes of decentralization sound good until you realize it means you’re either running your own server, or using a blockchain and need to protect a private key somehow. But normal humans want nothing to do with either of those responsibilities and always rely on a centralized service. If this ID standard included a way to use a centrally-controlled email address (the defacto ID standard today that works just fi…

I don't buy this idea that average people can't manage a keypair. Humans already manage secrets in the form of passwords, it's not that much different.

In the worst-case scenario in which users defer to some weak/centralized system, how is that categoricially worse than the centralized systems we already have?

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Becomes a W3C Recommendation

#74

Post by cowtools »

duskwuff wrote: post #67
k__ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard has grown out of the blockchain space, because they finally offered a way to do decentralized PKI. Most methods are based on blockchain networks. But there are some that work without blockchains. Like IOTA, IPFS, p2p, web, etc.

I mean, let's be real here. IOTA is a blockchain in all but name, IPFS is substantially blockchain-adjacent, "p2p" is vague to the point of meaninglessness (and isn't actually a registered method), and "web" is silly (a web site is already identified perfectly well by its URL).

I would classify BitTorrent, GNUtella and other filesharing networks as p2p

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Becomes a W3C Recommendation

#75

Post by cowtools »

oofbey wrote: post #49
k__ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard has grown out of the blockchain space, because they finally offered a way to do decentralized PKI. Most methods are based on blockchain networks. But there are some that work without blockchains. Like IOTA, IPFS, p2p, web, etc.

IPFS still looking for something useful it can do.

I think the idea is that it (or some future incarnation of it) eventually replaces most static web hosting, FTP, Bittorrent, and quite a bit of dynamic web hosting. Oh, and maybe messaging stuff like IRC.

Sounds like a big piece to chew, but I think the main hurdle is replacing HTTP(S) on the client side.

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Becomes a W3C Recommendation

#76

Post by bmn__ »

jfk13 wrote: post #4

Worth recalling that some major concerns have been expressed about this stuff. See discussion a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31939871

and also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28691422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004098

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Becomes a W3C Recommendation

#77

Post by ryukafalz »

cowtools wrote: post #73
oofbey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outcomes of decentralization sound good until you realize it means you’re either running your own server, or using a blockchain and need to protect a private key somehow. But normal humans want nothing to do with either of those responsibilities and always rely on a centralized service. If this ID standard included a way to use a centrally-controlled email address (the defacto ID standard today that works just fi…

I don't buy this idea that average people can't manage a keypair. Humans already manage secrets in the form of passwords, it's not that much different. In the worst-case scenario in which users defer to some weak/centralized system, how is that categoricially worse than the centralized systems we already have?

> Humans already manage secrets in the form of passwords, it's not that much different.

Humans are bad at this which is why we recommend password managers.

That said, I do think keypairs are the way forward, I just also think they need either strong integrated software support in whichever device is being used, or strong external hardware support.

(Yubikeys are nice because they kind of extend the “key” metaphor that people are already used to, but I wish they shipped with a paired backup key that was provisioned with the same key material. Maybe colored red to distinguish it.)

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Becomes a W3C Recommendation

#78

Post by duskwuff »

cowtools wrote: post #74
duskwuff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, let's be real here. IOTA is a blockchain in all but name, IPFS is substantially blockchain-adjacent, "p2p" is vague to the point of meaninglessness (and isn't actually a registered method), and "web" is silly (a web site is already identified perfectly well by its URL).

I would classify BitTorrent, GNUtella and other filesharing networks as p2p

My point is that P2P isn't a single thing -- it's a whole multitude of things, many of which don't make sense to create a DID for. Gnutella is a perfect example of where it wouldn't make sense: the Gnutella protocol didn't provide any way to create a persistent reference to a file that was being shared, and it'd make even less sense to tie an identity to such a file.

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Becomes a W3C Recommendation

#79

Post by mark_and_sweep »

espadrine wrote: post #58
riedel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny to see Google and Mozilla siding on ethical issues. It really seems like the W3C has finally lost its compass and now wants to venture into the blockchain. Only positive thing is to see Google loosing once in a standards fight, however, I think it might just have been the wrong anarchist endeavour inside the W3C. In the end we will get more centralisation because looks like nobody except the big ones can push s…

> Only positive thing is to see Google loosing once in a standards fight It is far from the first time. For instance, Google was involved in the WHATWG, which developed the HTML standard while the W3C pushed XHTML. The standards war, itself, is only lost when nearly nobody uses the standard, which is what happened to XHTML, which lost to WHATWG’s HTML when browsers simply didn’t use XHTML. It sounds like a lot of cry…

> browsers simply didn’t use XHTML

Do you mean "developers didn't use XHTML"?

All browsers implement XHTML. It's referred to as "the second concrete syntax for HTML" in the WHATWG spec.[1]

Indeed many websites do use XHTML, the HTML application of XML. However, since proper documents render identically, you won't be aware that you're visiting an XHTML site - that is, unless you check the source.

Fun history side note: Browsers like Netscape and Internet Explorer didn't agree on how to parse HTML in the past. They handled omitability differently, for example, in overlapping hierarchies (

). To fix this mess, Sir Tim asked well-respected SGML practicioners to create a clean subset of SGML and define a document type definition (DTD) for HTML. They came up with XML, the clean subset, and XHTML, the DTD. [2]

Basically, XHTML was the first actual standardization of HTML. Unfortunately, minor syntax errors will prevent a XHTML document from rendering, which, to some degree, is probably why it was never widely accepted by developers.

[1] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/introduction.html#htm...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4dYwEyjZcY

Re: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Becomes a W3C Recommendation

#80

Post by hinkley »

duskwuff wrote: post #67
k__ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard has grown out of the blockchain space, because they finally offered a way to do decentralized PKI. Most methods are based on blockchain networks. But there are some that work without blockchains. Like IOTA, IPFS, p2p, web, etc.

I mean, let's be real here. IOTA is a blockchain in all but name, IPFS is substantially blockchain-adjacent, "p2p" is vague to the point of meaninglessness (and isn't actually a registered method), and "web" is silly (a web site is already identified perfectly well by its URL).

It's a bit like comparing monkeys and apes though. Yes they're all primates but the family tree does matter and you can't just mash them together.

IPFS resembles many previous attempts at distributed file storage, which did not use blockchain. They had other ways to encourage fairness, which appears to be the primary use of blockchain in IPFS. The existence of the concept of Merkle trees, named or unnamed, lead to blockchain, not the other way around. And it has other children, like some digital signature specs.

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