Re: Announcing the 10-Year SSI Revision Project

"drawing on generative identity, *Ubuntu philosophy, feminist
sovereignty, decolonial theory*, legal personhood guarantees, and
real-world harms."

You lost me there.




Best regards,
[image: company-logo]
Jean F. Quéralt
Founder & CEO
The IO Foundation

+60 108 04 84 63

JFQueralt@theiofoundation.org <https://server.utags.co/dPYRRzLq>

TheIOFoundation.org <https://server.utags.co/UQhyvZjQ>


On Mon, 17 Nov 2025 at 03:29, Christopher Allen <
ChristopherA@lifewithalacrity.com> wrote:

> In 2016, I published The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity (
> https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/the-path-to-self-soverereign-identity/)
> and with it proposed ten foundational principles for digital identity
> systems. These principles were centered on human dignity, agency, and
> consent and quickly became a touchstone in the emerging world of
> Self-Sovereign Identity.
>
> At the time, I asked for support in refining those principals. And, we
> tried: at ID2020, Rebooting the Web of Trust, IIW, and elsewhere. But for
> nearly a decade, the original principles have remained largely unchanged,
> inspirational yet sometimes misunderstood.
>
> Now, in 2025, as the *Self-Sovereign Identity movement turns ten next
> year*, I’m renewing that invitation. And I'm asking for your
> participation.
>
> 📌 The 10-Year Revision Project
>
> The 10-year SSI Revision Project is an effort to revisit and refine the
> original SSI principles, not as a rigid standard, *but as a living
> framework* for people designing, governing, and deploying identity
> infrastructure that respects and protects the people it serves.
>
> SSI is no longer a theory. Its infrastructure has been adopted by
> governments, companies, communities, and protocols. As that adoption
> accelerates, the *foundational values must evolve *to meet today’s
> ethical, legal, and technical challenges including coercion, use of
> biometrics, AI agency, exclusion by design, and gamified behavioral
> manipulation.
>
> The goal is ultimately to revisit old principles and to propose new ones
> while making a renewed call to protect the dignity of all identity holders.
>
> 📅 Join the Collaboration
>
> To support this project, I’ll be hosting a series of *open online calls*
> over the next year to co-develop and discuss revised principles, new
> proposals, and system guidance. These sessions will welcome technologists,
> designers, researchers, regulators, and community stewards from across the
> SSI and identity ecosystem.
>
> The first of these will be *December 2nd, at 10am PT (7pm CET)* for
> maximum availability from EU to West Coast. Another friendlier to
> Asia/Pacific time zones is planned for the second week of December (time
> TBD based on participants).
>
> The goal of these first two meetings is to discuss opportunities for
> different topics, with the goal of writing up some initial rough "concept
> papers" (ala RWOT's "topic papers") to scope some of ideas that people have
> of what needs to be done.
>
> Hopefully you'll join us for these initial calls. No longer commitment is
> required, but the goal is to investigate your participation in writing some
> papers on this topic by May! But the most important thing is ultimately
> that your ideas and your feedback help to shape the continued development
> of Self-Sovereign Identity.
>
> Please let me know that you're interested in joining us!
>
> 🧭 Team Topics
>
> If we get enough participation, I expect we may split up into teams, to
> cover some of the various topics that bear discussion as we rethink SSI.
>
> Some early broad topics that we are considering currently are:
>
> 1. *Beyond Property: Principal Authority and the Legal Foundation of SSI.*
> Agency law, principal authority, and revamping or expanding the SSI
> principles based on them.
> 2. *Anti-Coercive Design and Cognitive Liberty.* Avoiding coercive
> design, which will likely include more academic discussions of philosophy
> and may reveal new principles.
> 3. *From Principles to Properties: Operationalizing SSI.* Start with a
> deep dive into the CSSPS  42-property framework published in IEEE Access (
> https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9875265) for objective design
> principles that might contribute to SSI.
> 4. *More Than a Digital Shadow: Rewriting Principle 1 – Existence.*
> Reclaiming the original intent of the first principle, that **every person
> has an identity that precedes any digital system**, drawing on generative
> identity, Ubuntu philosophy, feminist sovereignty, decolonial theory,
> legal personhood guarantees, and real-world harms.
>
> The intent is to write articles on each of these topics, and hopefully
> some more, by May 2026, in time for the anniversary and use those articles
> to revise, revamp, and expand the original principles. But to get there
> from here, we need to start coordinating now!
>
>
> *🌱 Why This Matters*
> SSI has always been more than a technical spec. It’s a movement for
> restoring **dignity, agency, and trust** in a digital world that too often
> erodes all three. As its adoption spreads, we must ensure that the
> principles at its foundation still serve the people they were meant to
> protect.
>
> Let’s not let another ten years pass before we act.
>
>
> *📙 Requested Reading*
> I've written a number of articles about SSI over the years. I think three
> of them are particularly important to these discussions, and I suggest that
> people read them as part of this process:
>
>    - *The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity:* (
>    https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/the-path-to-self-soverereign-identity/)
>    (2016). My original article, which lays out the pre-history of SSI and the
>    initial 10 principles.
>    - *Origins of Self-Sovereign Identity:*(
>    https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/origins-SSI/)** (2021). A
>    look at the philosophical and political roots of SSI, including its lineage
>    in civil liberties, cryptographic activism, and human rights frameworks.
>    - *Principal Authority: A New Perspective on Self-Sovereign Identity* (
>    https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/Principal-Authority/) (2021).
>    How identity should not be framed as property, but as a domain of agency
>    governed by fiduciary duty and inalienable rights.
>
> I am also working on an annotated syllabus of some of the most
> important papers and articles published the last 9 years – my initial pass
> I will share before our first meeting in December.
>
> 🤝🏼 Join Us
>
> Some of the people that have expressed interest in joining us for this
> effort are Kim Hamilton Duffy (DIF), Rodolfo Costa (University of Coimbra),
> Georgy Ishmaev (Inria), Vinay Vasanji (EF), Ian Grigg, Philip Sheldrake,
> and more. As you can see, a mixture of both critics and supporters of SSI,
> coming from a variety of backgrounds, from academia to technology. What we
> are weak on so far are people from law and regulation.
>
> You can email me directly and let me know you'd like to be involved, or
> sign up for an announcements-only #RevisitingSSI email list (
> https://www.blockchaincommons.com/subscribe/#ssi-tenth-anniversary) or
> alternatively joining our Signal group (
> https://signal.group/#CjQKIGvXAxLVq2z08-ckRWSlUIdRvX95lFh2APQaE0Oh_KFvEhB1R_7kkWDa9Oi3fh7R_I-a),
> which we'll be using to coordinate our initial calls.
>
> If you or your organization wishes to demonstrate its support for goals of
> Self-Sovereign Identity, I am seeking financial sponsors for this project