Re: Proof of possession

On 06/14/2016 05:14 PM, David Chadwick wrote:
> BTW, losing a key, physical or electronic, is always a hassle, but it
> is not irreparable.

In some cases it is:

For example, a student goes to a community college, learns a new skill,
and is issued a verifiable claim asserting that new skill.

The community college goes out of business a year later.

The student loses their private key a year after that.

The student is now in the position of having to re-take the
classes/exams to prove that they have the skill set in question.

Surely the community college had a data propagation strategy! Not all of
them do, and even if they do, some of them still let students
slip through the cracks.

Or this scenario:

Someone builds up 30 years of verifiable claims and then loses their
private key. Can you imagine how hard it would be to get all of those
claims back? How much you'd have to prove?

The point isn't that something is irreparable - yes, most things can be
fixed. It just takes an enormous amount of time, energy, money, and stress.

... and we can avoid all of this by using identifiers that are not
cryptographic in nature (e.g. DIDs).

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
JSON-LD Best Practice: Context Caching
https://manu.sporny.org/2016/json-ld-context-caching/

Received on Wednesday, 15 June 2016 01:26:03 UTC