Self-Sovereign Identity - Revision history

Tom: /* Problem */

2025-06-15T00:58:27Z

‎Problem

Tom: /* Full Title or Meme */

2025-06-09T00:37:40Z

‎Full Title or Meme

Tom: /* Sovrin */

2024-10-21T22:23:58Z

‎Sovrin

Tom: /* Sovrin */

2024-10-21T22:19:38Z

‎Sovrin

Tom: /* Sovrin */

2024-10-21T18:01:57Z

‎Sovrin

Tom: /* Problem */

2024-10-21T18:01:01Z

‎Problem

Tom: /* Problem */

2024-10-21T17:54:22Z

‎Problem

Tom: /* Sovrin */

2024-10-21T17:52:53Z

‎Sovrin

Tom: /* Sovrin */

2024-10-21T17:51:53Z

‎Sovrin

Tom: /* Sovrin */

2024-10-21T17:50:58Z

‎Sovrin

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 * [https://www.serverbrain.org/active-directory-security-2003/lightweight-directory-access-protocol-ldap.html#:~:text=The%20major%20difference%20between%20DAP,Agent)%20of%20the%20network%20directory. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol LDAP] 2021-09-27
 Riley Hughes has been chronicling Trinsic's progress with SSI on Medium for 5 years when he wrote his 2024-10-15 paper "Why Aren't Widely Adopted"<ref name="hughes">Riely Hughes, ''Why Verifiable Credentials Aren’t Widely Adopted & Why Trinsic Pivoted'' 2024-10-15 https://medium.com/@rileyparkerhughes/why-verifiable-credentials-arent-widely-adopted-why-trinsic-pivoted-aee946379e3b</ref> seems to throw in the towel and said that creating standards before a solution is understood is a waste of time.
 ==Solutions==

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ==Full Title or Meme==
-Giving users control and ownership of their own [[Identifier]]s.
+Giving users control and ownership of their own [[Identifier]]s, [[Attribute]]s and [[Behavior]]s (personal, private information).
 ==Context==

@@ Line 45: / Line 45: @@
 # The board outlined 4 reasons for shutting down. Declining traffic, regulatory uncertainty, technical challenges, lack of community involvement. Realistically, there is 1 reason. The community moved on. Not only did traffic on the network decline, but no new vendors added Sovrin Network support in 2024. Furthermore, there are no realistic alternatives to Sovrin for adherents to the Anoncreds ecosystem—so to me, this indicates the growth rate of new vendors supporting the Anoncreds ecosystem is low-to-nonexistent. (I’m skipping over a bunch of nuance here that won’t fit on LinkedIn. Happy to discuss the edge cases in the comments.)
 # The current board has acted as Sovrin’s life support for the last 3+ years. I respect and admire these people for volunteering for a thankless role and taking a shot. I haven’t agreed with many of the decisions the current board has taken. But in hindsight, this outcome was inevitable. It’s as simple as this: in general, companies building on Sovrin didn’t succeed in production. In absence of that, no network could sustain itself indefinitely. (See post above<ref name="hughes" /> for my thoughts on why)
 # Sovrin’s promise was always that the Network would persist through a decentralized group of Stewards hosting nodes on the network, even if the Foundation closed operations. In a way, that sort of happened. The volunteers currently running Sovrin, many of whom are representatives from node operators, kept the network operations alive for years. But this illustrates to me the importance of incentives in decentralized systems. Without an incentive to keep operating nodes, eventually the network would break down. The folks who decried the “hybrid” permissioned network appear to be right.

@@ Line 42: / Line 42: @@
 Cofounder, CEO at Trinsic
-An end of an era. Sovrin Foundation announced last week that its network & operations will shut down early 2025. As the 2nd employee at Sovrin, here’s my top 3 takes on the situation:
+An end of an era. Sovrin Foundation announced last week that its network & operations will shut down early 2025. First of all, Sovrin was truly something special circa 2018. In 2020 when the Foundation “transitioned” to a volunteer workforce, I wrote a blog post called “On the Future of Sovrin”. My predictions didn’t age so well. But I chronicle some of why Sovrin will always represent an important part of my career story. I also had a great convo with Phil Windley, the key person in the early Foundation, on the Future of Identity podcast. That’s a good episode if you want an inside peek into the early days of Sovrin. Here are Riely's top 3 takes on the demise:
-First of all, Sovrin was truly something special circa 2018. In 2020 when the Foundation “transitioned” to a volunteer workforce, I wrote a blog post called “On the Future of Sovrin”. My predictions didn’t age so well. But I chronicle some of why Sovrin will always represent an important part of my career story. I also had a great convo with Phil Windley, the key person in the early Foundation, on the Future of Identity podcast. That’s a good episode if you want an inside peek into the early days of Sovrin.
+# The board outlined 4 reasons for shutting down. Declining traffic, regulatory uncertainty, technical challenges, lack of community involvement. Realistically, there is 1 reason. The community moved on. Not only did traffic on the network decline, but no new vendors added Sovrin Network support in 2024. Furthermore, there are no realistic alternatives to Sovrin for adherents to the Anoncreds ecosystem—so to me, this indicates the growth rate of new vendors supporting the Anoncreds ecosystem is low-to-nonexistent. (I’m skipping over a bunch of nuance here that won’t fit on LinkedIn. Happy to discuss the edge cases in the comments.)
-Take 1:
+# The current board has acted as Sovrin’s life support for the last 3+ years. I respect and admire these people for volunteering for a thankless role and taking a shot. I haven’t agreed with many of the decisions the current board has taken. But in hindsight, this outcome was inevitable. It’s as simple as this: in general, companies building on Sovrin didn’t succeed in production. In absence of that, no network could sustain itself indefinitely. (See post above<ref name="hughes" /> for my thoughts on why)
-Take 2:
+# Sovrin’s promise was always that the Network would persist through a decentralized group of Stewards hosting nodes on the network, even if the Foundation closed operations. In a way, that sort of happened. The volunteers currently running Sovrin, many of whom are representatives from node operators, kept the network operations alive for years. But this illustrates to me the importance of incentives in decentralized systems. Without an incentive to keep operating nodes, eventually the network would break down. The folks who decried the “hybrid” permissioned network appear to be right.
 That’s it! So much more could be said on the topic. I’ll end with a (slightly edited) quote from my 2020 post about the Future of Sovrin:

@@ Line 44: / Line 44: @@
 An end of an era. Sovrin Foundation announced last week that its network & operations will shut down early 2025. As the 2nd employee at Sovrin, here’s my top 3 takes on the situation:
-First of all, Sovrin was truly something special circa 2018. In 2020 when the Foundation “transitioned” to a volunteer workforce, I wrote a blog post called “On the Future of Sovrin”. My predictions didn’t age so well. 😂 But I chronicle some of why Sovrin will always represent an important part of my career story. I also had a great convo with Phil Windley, the key person in the early Foundation, on the Future of Identity podcast. That’s a good episode if you want an inside peek into the early days of Sovrin.
+First of all, Sovrin was truly something special circa 2018. In 2020 when the Foundation “transitioned” to a volunteer workforce, I wrote a blog post called “On the Future of Sovrin”. My predictions didn’t age so well. But I chronicle some of why Sovrin will always represent an important part of my career story. I also had a great convo with Phil Windley, the key person in the early Foundation, on the Future of Identity podcast. That’s a good episode if you want an inside peek into the early days of Sovrin.
 Take 1:
@@ Line 50: / Line 50: @@
 Take 2:
-The current board has acted as Sovrin’s life support for the last 3+ years. I respect and admire these people for volunteering for a thankless role and taking a shot. I haven’t agreed with many of the decisions the current board has taken. But in hindsight, this outcome was inevitable. It’s as simple as this: in general, companies building on Sovrin didn’t succeed in production. In absence of that, no network could sustain itself indefinitely. (See my post above for my thoughts on why)
+The current board has acted as Sovrin’s life support for the last 3+ years. I respect and admire these people for volunteering for a thankless role and taking a shot. I haven’t agreed with many of the decisions the current board has taken. But in hindsight, this outcome was inevitable. It’s as simple as this: in general, companies building on Sovrin didn’t succeed in production. In absence of that, no network could sustain itself indefinitely. (See post above<ref name="hughes" /> for my thoughts on why)
 Take 3:

@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 * [https://damienbod.com/2021/10/11/challenges-to-self-sovereign-identity/ CHALLENGES TO SELF SOVEREIGN IDENTITY] DamienBod 2021-10-11
 * [https://www.serverbrain.org/active-directory-security-2003/lightweight-directory-access-protocol-ldap.html#:~:text=The%20major%20difference%20between%20DAP,Agent)%20of%20the%20network%20directory. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol LDAP] 2021-09-27
-Riley Hughes has been chronicling Trinsic's progress with SSI on Medium for 5 years when he wrote his 2024-10-15 paper "Why Aren't Widely Adopted"<ref>Riely Hughes, ''Why Verifiable Credentials Aren’t Widely Adopted & Why Trinsic Pivoted'' 2024-10-15 https://medium.com/@rileyparkerhughes/why-verifiable-credentials-arent-widely-adopted-why-trinsic-pivoted-aee946379e3b</ref> seems to throw in the towel and said that creating standards before a solution is understood is a waste of time.
+Riley Hughes has been chronicling Trinsic's progress with SSI on Medium for 5 years when he wrote his 2024-10-15 paper "Why Aren't Widely Adopted"<ref name-hughes>Riely Hughes, ''Why Verifiable Credentials Aren’t Widely Adopted & Why Trinsic Pivoted'' 2024-10-15 https://medium.com/@rileyparkerhughes/why-verifiable-credentials-arent-widely-adopted-why-trinsic-pivoted-aee946379e3b</ref> seems to throw in the towel and said that creating standards before a solution is understood is a waste of time.
 ==Solutions==

@@ Line 60: / Line 60: @@
 That’s it! So much more could be said on the topic. I’ll end with a (slightly edited) quote from my 2020 post about the Future of Sovrin:
+ “Nobody gets it right the first time. Every startup requires pivoting. Financial markets require correction. Medical diagnosis often requires trial and error. The Foundation is no different—the initial approach didn’t pan out as hoped. But that’s OK. [Digital identity’s] brightest days are still ahead and I believe a new direction will ultimately be a very positive thing for the community.”
 ==References==