Question: WebAuthn announcement -- relation to DIDs?

Greetings,

The Guardian yesterday had a story of what appears to be a major 
announcement about how WebAuthn will replace passwords:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/11/passwords-webauthn-new-web-standard-designed-replace-login-method

This included a quote showing that this is a W3C project:

“WebAuthn will change the way that people access the Web,” said Jeff 
Jaffe, chief executive of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the 
body that controls web standards."

And after looking at the recent API spec itself, I see that it's a 
FIDO project, and so supported by Google, Microsoft, Paypal, and also 
Mozilla:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2018/CR-webauthn-20180320/

My Question:

Is there any expected or known relationship between WebAuthn and the 
use of DIDs? ie., Can WebAuthn be used with DIDs? Will the uptake of 
WebAuthn preclude or inhibit the use of DIDs?

ie., Are DID Docs and WebAuthn in competition, or are they complementary?

Steven

Received on Thursday, 12 April 2018 16:22:01 UTC