Re: Announcing the 10-Year SSI Revision Project

On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 4:54 PM Jean F. Quéralt <
JFQueralt@theiofoundation.org> wrote:

> In drawing on generative identity, *Ubuntu philosophy, feminist
>> sovereignty, decolonial theory*, legal personhood guarantees, and
>> real-world harms.
>>
>
>>
> You lost me there.
>

Jean,

Re: getting lost, some answers:

> **Generative Identity & Ubuntu philosophy**

There are a number of critiques of  my 2016 Self-Sovereign Identity
principles that argue it is too focused on the individual, emphasizing
instead that identity is fundamentally relational. I’ve tried to reflect
and express these concerns in the *Relational Autonomy* Lens (see: [
https://revisitingssi.com/lenses/briefs/relational-autonomy/](https://revisitingssi.com/lenses/briefs/relational-autonomy/)
).

Ubuntu teaches “I am because we are”—yet SSI architectures typically model
identity as individual containers of attributes. This lens examines what
gets lost under such a model: immigration systems that can’t see family
bonds, chama membership invisible to credit systems, and how
relationship-aware credentials could change both.

Some illustrative questions in this space include:

* How do immigration systems separate families because credentials focus on
individual attributes, rendering family units invisible—with no
cryptographically provable relationship bond?
* Why should chama membership (200,000+ Kenyan savings groups managing
$1.7B) count as a trustworthiness signal even when government ID cannot
demonstrate community standing?
* How do we prevent asymmetric relationship claims—e.g., stalkers asserting
ties to victims, or abusive ex-partners claiming connections without
consent?
* What would bilateral consent for relationship credentials look like—where
both parties must cryptographically approve before any relationship
assertion can exist?
* How do we support both disappearance *and* recognition—when some
individuals need near-absolute privacy to survive (journalists, survivors
of abuse), while others depend on community visibility for safety and
legitimacy?


I’m not an expert on this Lens; there are substantial papers and books
linked in the “Selected Resources” section:
https://revisitingssi.com/lenses/briefs/relational-autonomy/#7-selected-resources

> Feminist Identity

I wrote about this briefly in a subsection of my article "Origins of
Self-Sovereign Identity":
https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/origins-SSI/#sovereignty-from-a-feminist-lens

When I chose the term *Self-Sovereign Identity* in 2016 and drafted the 10
Principles, I was influenced by a speech from Salma Hayek urging women to
“claim their sovereignty.” Investigating further, I encountered work by
Vaishnavi Pallapothu, which reframed sovereignty in a way that deeply
resonated with me. I wrote this summary based on her work:

> This feminist interpretation of sovereignty fundamentally disrupts the
power dynamics traditionally associated with sovereignty. Instead of seeing
sovereignty as a tool of domination and control, Pallapothu reframes
sovereignty as a means of affirming individual agency and prosperity.
Moreover, she introduces fluidity and inclusivity, emphasizing cooperation
and mutual respect between entities—whether individuals, communities, or
nations.

As with generative identity, I am not an expert on Feminist Identity, but
this perspective is one of the ones that inspired me, and I hope others can
bring more depth to it in our workshops over the next month.

> Decolonial theory

In reviewing the more than 500 papers that have cited my 2016 *Path to
Self-Sovereign Identity* paper outlining the 10 Principles, I found a
recurring critique: that SSI was framed in ways that felt too Western and
techno-libertarian, and that it didn’t adequately acknowledge or respect
alternative cultures—particularly those emerging from Asia, Indigenous
traditions, the Global South, or community-centric knowledge systems.

I acknowledge this critique. I, too, have reservations about some of the
techno-libertarian interpretations that people derived from the
Principles—interpretations I never intended (see again "Origins of SSI":
https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/origins-SSI/. My hope is that
through the #RevisitingSSI project, we can bring in broader perspectives
and address these concerns in the 2026 revision of the principles.

> Legal personhood guarantees

There are also important issues related to misunderstandings of the first
SSI principle, “Existence.” Some have reframed it as “associate individual
users’ identities with their unique identifiers,” effectively making
existence conditional on encoding. In this move, “independent existence”
becomes “exists because it is in the database”—a shift from *identity
precedes systems* to *systems define identity*.

My concerns about this are highlighted especially well in *The Irreducible
Person* Lens:
[
https://revisitingssi.com/lenses/briefs/irreducible-person/](https://revisitingssi.com/lenses/briefs/irreducible-person/)

> *You exist—no system needs to grant that, and none should take it away.
Some aspects of personhood (dignity, existence, cognitive liberty) lose
their protective meaning the moment we try to measure them.*

My hope is to ensure that the 2026 Principles leave no ambiguity here: the
first principle is **not** about digital shadows or identifiers, but about
the inherent dignity and existence of human beings.

Beyond principle #1, there are broader questions about proof-of-personhood
(and its risks), the complexities of legal personhood guarantees—such as
the long-standing legal fiction that a corporation is a “person”—and the
emerging challenges posed by AI. Some legal constructs were designed to
protect human dignity, while others grant rights to non-human entities in
ways that blur debates about identity, agency, and accountability—or, if
misapplied, further entrench institutional power.

> **Real-world harms**

One of my concerns with some of the critiques of SSI is that they often
lack a sufficiently concrete explanation of how their proposed changes
would actually protect people, particularly against coercion. This is why,
in these workshops, I encourage participants who bring new ideas to also
articulate the *real-world harms* their Lens is intended to address.

I hope this helps address your questions. If you have more, I encourage you
to bring them to the public discussion area on GitHub:
https://github.com/RevisitingSSI/Community/discussions or to join the
private Signal chat group.

—Christopher Allen