Distributed ID

Full Title or Meme

A means to distribute the sources of Identifiers and Attributes while giving more choice to Users.

Context

Every one knows the problem with identities on the internet. They are not under the control of users, who are extremely interested in their own Identity and want their own Privacy.

• Decentralized ID (DID) is a somewhat different concept in that it envisions an Identifier which is crated by the user, and could serve as a basis for a Distributed ID, but does not address the relationship to other Identifiers.
• The current paradigm in open identity is for each conforming Relying Party to provide a list of Identifier or Attribute Providers that the User could chose from to allow access.
  • In this model it was up to the Relying Party to establish a link and share a secret with the Identifier or Attribute Provider in advance of any transactions.
  • It also required the user to pre-register with one or more of those providers, typically one of the big social sites, like: Google, Microsoft or Facebook.
• The current most common protocol for some sort of a Distributed Identity was OpenID Connect which included Self-issued Identifier, but that feature of OpenID Connect had not been deployed in 2018.

Problems

• The big problem is Trust where there are no standards or examples of any trust without a history of trusted behavior.
• Proof of Persistent Identity must be provided. This can be little more than the inclusion of a public key in a block chain, but that cannot provide any Assurance of protection of the Credential.
• DID are designed to be tied to a did method (e.g. Sovrin) which means that a life-long ID requires life-long methods with no means to migrate, even when the method dies out or is proven defective.
• DIDs are designed to come with all sorts of attributes and service points of that particular user. It is highly unlikely that this can be accomplished without leaking the real identity of the user (subject of the DID.)

Solutions

• In this wiki the IAP (Identifier or Attribute Provider) supplies the contents of a Data Category only when that category has User Consent. To get all of those categories that the Relying Party requires, the request needs to go to a User Agent that is able to release the data held across many providers, some of the Thousand Points of Light that apply to the real-world User, but only those appropriate for the Relying Party request are enabled by the user.
• The Hundred Points of Light serve as a metaphor for the Distributed ID.

References

1. Decentralized Digital Identities and Blockchain perspective from Microsoft