Announcing the 10-Year SSI Revision Project

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.
Contact me about different sponsorship opportunities, or you can directly
support my work on these kinds of efforts via GitHub (via a one-time
donation or ongoing monthly patronage) at
https://github.com/sponsors/ChristopherA.

I look forward to collaborating with you!

-- Christopher Allen