Re: Revisiting SSI at Ten -- Preliminary Revised Principles Open for Review

Hi Christopher ,

Thank you for sharing these principles of SSI

Building on Steve’s point, I wonder if the distinction may lie not in the
technology itself, but in the nature of the subject it represents.

SSI, as originally framed, is centered on the “self” — a human,
rights-bearing entity where concepts like inalienability and autonomy are
fundamental. In contrast, many real-world applications of DIDs and VCs
(such as consignments or trade documents as mentioned by Steve) deal with
objects or transferable assets, where transferability is not only valid but
required.

This suggests that while the underlying primitives are neutral, the
principles governing them may need clearer scoping — particularly
distinguishing between human identity and non-human or asset-based
identifiers.

An interesting edge case here is digital inheritance. In scenarios such as
key loss or death, control over identifiers and associated assets may need
to transition to designated beneficiaries. This is not transfer in a
commercial sense, but rather continuity of control under pre-defined
conditions, which raises questions about how principles like inalienability
or autonomy should be interpreted in such contexts.

i want to know, how you see this boundary: should the principles apply
universally across all DID use cases, or be explicitly scoped to
human-centered identity?


Regards

Amir Hameed Mir

On Mon, 27 Apr 2026 at 7:07 AM, steve capell <steve.capell@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Christopher,
>
> What an excellent set of principles.  I have a couple of thoughts but they
> are not easily reflected as edits to the document because they rather apply
> to the whole document.  So I’ll write them here for consideration.  Feel
> free to ignore or tell me what I might do to help reflect these in the text
> (or related text).
>
>
>    - *Express as model law.*  My first thought is that these principles,
>    whilst a laudable statement of what we’d all love to see, are not going to
>    be implemented by just wishing they were true because some of them
>    (deliberately) are opposite to what a selfish commercial interest might
>    want.  Therefore many or all of them would become real and enforceable only
>    when they are reflected in national law.  To that end, it’s helpful to
>    write them as “model law” in legally defensible language that is more or
>    less ready to selectively cut and paste into national regulations. This is
>    what the UN often does with treaties and actual model laws like this one -
>    https://uncitral.un.org/en/texts/ecommerce/modellaw/electronic_transferable_records.
>    It’s one of many model law documents from UN/CITRAL. The SSI principles
>    aren’t quite written this way.  Not suggesting to change the principles but
>    maybe consider an accompanying document that is written as implementable
>    model law?  Acknowledging the high risk of hallucination and mistakes,
>    here’s what chatGPT thinks needs to happen before these principles could
>    become model law -
>    https://chatgpt.com/s/t_69eeb8b7a374819190bb1337327f976f
>    - *SSI Principles are for people not things*.  My second thought is
>    that these principles reflect how we’d like to see technologies like DIDs
>    and VCs used with people to protect their rights and privacy and so on.
>    However these same technologies can be very usefully applied to inanimate
>    things - like an ocean consignment where the consignment would have a DID
>    and the Bill of Lading for that consignment would be a VC.  Ocean bills are
>    negotiable instruments that are explicitly designed to allow trading of the
>    goods while at see. So we want the tach to allow trading of goods but most
>    certainly not the trading of people. The ocean bill is a pair document that
>    has stubbornly resisted digitalisation because of the difficulty of finding
>    an open and interoperable way to verify integrity (easy with VCs) and
>    record transfer of ownership (possible with NFTs but not very interoperable
>    - so DIDs with key event histories offer an alternative).  However the
>    valid application of the same SSI technologies to this domain of the
>    shipment of things would directly contravene several of the principles -
>    with good reason.  So maybe the principles (especially if translated to
>    model law) need to clearly scope their applicability to people and not to
>    things?
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Steve Capell
> UN/CEFACT Vice-Chair
> steve.capell@gmail.com
> +61 410437854
>
>
>
> On 26 Apr 2026, at 6:22 pm, Christopher Allen <
> ChristopherA@lifewithalacrity.com> wrote:
>
> On April 26, 2016, I published The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity
> <https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/the-path-to-self-soverereign-identity/>
> and closed it with a request: *"I seek your assistance in taking these
> principles to the next level."*
>
> Ten years to the day, I am publishing a first community draft as a major
> revision:
>
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P13Wy1plHWXIonErNXSG8R-n9L4fWTtUzglAcObNSXs/
>
> A stable archival copy is mirrored:
>
>     https://revisitingssi.com/library/ssi-principles-2026-redline/
>
> The draft preserves the 2016 language verbatim wherever it survives, so
> the continuity remains visible alongside revision. It organizes the
> principles into four layers -- foundational, relational, technical,
> political -- and adds six new principles:
>
>   * Inalienability
>   * Cognitive Liberty
>   * Relational Autonomy
>   * Stewardship
>   * Equity
>   * Anti-Coercive Design
>
> The revisions grew out of five months of discussions at RevisitingSSI.com,
> with contributions from Kim Hamilton Duffy (DIF), Vinay Vasanji (EF),
> Georgy Ishmaev (Inria), Martina Kolpondinos, Ian Grigg, Philip Sheldrake,
> Matthew Schutte, and many others.
>
> I am publishing in redline form, on this anniversary, precisely because it
> is unfinished. My hope is to iterate it with this community and others over
> the coming months and present a more mature version at the Global Digital
> Collaboration (GDC) event in Geneva this September.
>
> *Four ways to participate*
>
> 1. Read and comment in the Google Doc. Every clause is open for inline
> comment.
>
> 2. Find me next week (April 28-30) at the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW)
> in Mountain View, CA. I will be there all three days and plan to propose at
> least session -- more if there is interest.
>
> 3. Join me next week when I am a guest in the CCG call, May 5, 9:00-9:50
> PDT / 12:00-12:50 EDT / 18:00-18:50 CEST (16:00 UTC).
>
>     Event:
> https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/6c106024-7f5f-4297-972b-18af6432aaef/20260505T120000/
>
> 4. Attend the dedicated Revisiting SSI community discussion on May 20
> (10am PDT / 7pm CEST). Meeting access is shared on the Signal group and the
> announcements list:
> https://www.blockchaincommons.com/dispatches/ssi-invite/#-join-us
>
> The work between now and Geneva depends on this community pushing back on
> what is imprecise, challenging what is wrong, and adding what is missing.
>
> -- Christopher Allen
>
>>
>