Re: Does the W3C still believe in Tim Berners-Lee's vision of decentralization?

Hello,

"DID hoovering" - sounds like something to add to a credibility check on
credentials.

Thanks,

Adeel

On Thu, 14 Oct 2021 at 22:11, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:

> On 10/13/21 12:39 PM, Nikos Fotiou wrote:
> > You are saying "[...] DID Method you want to, as long as the site
> supports
> > it".
>
> If you want something to work, the site has to accept it, yes... however,
> that's not the only thing I was saying...
>
> > Isn't this the perfect example of fragmentation and divergence? E.g.,
> > currently the DID registry has 15 methods that use Ethereum to store
> > information. IMHO it should be trivial to support all them (at least
> some
> > basic functionality, such as "retrieve the authentication key"). But as
> > far as I understand, it isn't! Even if it is, it is not properly
> > demonstrated. Right now the situation appears like having an OIDC library
> > ("the DID resolver")  that must be modified for every new authorization
> > server!
>
> Let's start with an example that works instead of the examples that don't.
>
> did:key is an example where, as long as the site supports did:key, you can
> do
> cryptographic authentication with it. There are not 50 ways to resolve
> did:key, there is one way, and that one way can be adopted by all sites.
>
> It is true that we have 112 DID Methods, but we expect there will be market
> consolidation over time, and some DID Methods will win out over other ones.
>
> For example, taking your example, yes, there are 15 methods that use
> Ethereum... and no one wants to support 15 different Ethereum resolvers,
> they
> probably only want to support ONE of them (if they care about Ethereum). So
> the Ethereum community will have a choice to consolidate to one method
> that's
> backed by the Ethereum blockchain, or lose out to other blockchain networks
> that do consolidate.
>
> There used to be LOTS of OpenID providers listed on websites... but over
> time,
> it just consolidated to Google, Facebook, Apple, and GitHub (for example).
> We
> expect the same thing to happen with DID networks, but this time, you'll be
> consolidating to something that is not owned by a single corporation, and
> something that doesn't hoover up all of your data as a result of you
> logging
> in with them.
>
> I hope that helps why we don't believe that we're not promoting
> fragmentation
> and divergence in the long term.
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> News: Digital Bazaar Announces New Case Studies (2021)
> https://www.digitalbazaar.com/
>
>