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

On Sun, Apr 26, 2026 at 4:25 AM Christopher Allen
<ChristopherA@lifewithalacrity.com> wrote:
> On April 26, 2016, I published The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity and closed it with a request: "I seek your assistance in taking these principles to the next level."

Hey Christopher, this is a great initiative -- thank you for putting
so much time and effort into revising the principles. As you know,
these principles have guided much of the work of this community and
the DID and VC Working Groups at W3C.

We have also been dismayed at how some other organizations have
co-opted the work to further centralized and coerce people into data
models, protocols, and systems that are not in their best interests.

One of the things that I do from time to time is subjectively measure
how each technology we're building at W3C, through the groups we're
engaged in, does against the principles. I'd like us to continue doing
that, and apply the principles to groups at W3C that many of us do not
participate in (such as the Digital Credential API being worked on in
the Federated Credential Management Working Group).

There are two general problem areas that I don't see addressed:

* Standards Development Organization Capture - that is, when a work
item in an SDO is captured by monied interests and locks out
technologies that would enable competition. All of the SDOs are
captured to a certain degree, how do we help regulators see that.

* Corruption of Fair Market Competition -- that is, when standards are
side-lined by monied interests that seek to centralize power through
their platform. This is related to the above, but different enough to
stand on its own -- even if we have standards, monied interests can
choose to not implement them because they draw down their power.

Before suggesting what sort of text might highlight these issues, do
you think the principles should cover things in the two areas above?
To put it another way, the principles have blind spots, and if we
don't address the two items above (in a way that makes it into model
law, as Steve mentions), then the outcome is still failure (long
term).

The Utah State Endorsed Digital Identity (SEDI) stuff is a step in the
right direction... we need to figure out how these principles get
translated into stuff like SEDI, too.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
https://www.digitalbazaar.com/

Received on Monday, 27 April 2026 14:03:16 UTC