RE: "Decentralized Identifiers": Bitcoin Cargo-Culture and Land Grabbing for the Top Level Names

Frankly, I personally am very interested in having a list of public keys that I can use automatically in emails.  I don’t really care if I have a non-correlatable key with each person I talk to.  Just being able to have conversations that are known to be private would be a BIG plus. If an email system can automatically look up those keys in a trusted server, and had a large fraction of the population in it (or actually most of the people I want to talk with), that would be great. The technology has been around for decades, but the database isn’t.  I wonder if there is just no demand for it? Or is it too hard to bootstrap?

From: heather vescent [mailto:heathervescent@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2018 12:55 PM
To: Jordan, John CITZ:EX <John.Jordan@gov.bc.ca>
Cc: public-credentials@w3.org; Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
Subject: Re: "Decentralized Identifiers": Bitcoin Cargo-Culture and Land Grabbing for the Top Level Names

+1 John. The economic model we are working in transcends the market economy limitation.

-H

On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 9:02 AM, Jordan, John CITZ:EX <John.Jordan@gov.bc.ca<mailto:John.Jordan@gov.bc.ca>> wrote:
Hi All

I think there is more than one economic model and that there need not be a zero sum game in terms of the incentives for why organizations might participate in an SSI ecosystem. There could be a number of different models that all together form a rich fabric of incentives for a full digital ecosystem.
For example, government (which I work for), underpins the economy by being the source of truth for identity (both persons and legal entities) and setting the ground rules (e.g. laws) for economic activity. Our incentives are quite different and not a source of revenue but an enabling prerequisite to a functioning economy. I would encourage the community to think broadly about this and recognize that we need to keep working at creating conditions which encourage the full participation of government in the establishment of digital trust for people and legal entities which, in my personal opinion, is strongly needed.

John

On 2018-04-09, 6:02 AM, "Manu Sporny" <msporny@digitalbazaar.com<mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com>> wrote:

    On 04/09/2018 03:56 AM, Dennis Yurkevich wrote:
    > What are the economic incentives for implementers to store DIDs
    > forever?

    Fundamentally, nothing is free and these decentralized systems need
    money to operate. In every one of these systems, nodes are compensated
    for participating in the network on an ongoing basis. Fundamentally, if
    you run a node, money goes into your bank account. That's the economic
    incentive.

    > What stops method implementers not creating centralised and non SSI
    > systems?

    Nothing can stop that. The only thing the standards provide for is that
    if such a system were to be built, it will be technically interoperable
    with the larger system (but would lack some of the decentralized
    characteristics that those of us in this community would like to see).
    Market forces may doom such a centralized DID Method, but that happens
    in the future... which is hard to predict. :)

    -- manu

    --
    Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
    Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
    blog: Veres One Decentralized Identifier Blockchain Launches
    https://tinyurl.com/veres-one-launches






--
Heather Vescent
@heathervescent // www.heathervescent.com<http://www.heathervescent.com> // skype: heathervescent