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

+1 Manu and the other commenters on the updated principles. With or without
the principles, our workgroups are being overwhelmed by the forces Manu is
calling out.

I too, appreciate Christopher’s contribution to SEDI and other initiatives
but the principles, original or as revised, don’t do much for me. There’s
way too much there and way too little of what we’ve all learned in a
decade.

I suggest we need to review our intent and what has kept us together and
let the principles continue as the historical foundation that they are
instead of revising them.

What’s needed now is a focused critique of what’s going on and a concise
plan for what we need to change about our own behaviors.

Adrian

On Mon, Apr 27, 2026 at 4:05 PM Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
wrote:

> 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/
>
>