Re: [PROPOSAL] Standardizing DID Key Recovery: Three Viable Architectures (Social, Temporal, and Distributed)

On Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 9:53 AM Amir Hameed <amsaalegal@gmail.com> wrote:
> Questions for the Community

I did a quick scan of the spec, looks good as a start with the
following caveats:

* I have no idea if the math or cryptographic protocols work out,
you'll need some experts in VDF and MPC
* The changelog looks like it was hallucinated by the LLM you used to
generate the spec. :)

> Do these three models cover the majority of use cases the community is currently seeing?

I think they cover enough to be worth pursuing. The biggest questions
I have are: What are the downsides for each approach? How much
infrastructure is required to be set up for them to actually work in
practice? What are the economic drivers that will drive the sort of
behavior that each recovery method depends on?

> Should these be specified as separate extensions or unified under a single recovery verification relationship?

I think publishing a single recovery spec that contains the first
three recovery mechanisms is a good way to proceed. I expect that we'd
merge it into the core DID spec in time (which would probably need to
wait until the next DID WG recharter).

> Are there existing CCG work items we should align with or build upon?

You should take a look at the work Christopher has done in this area.
SSKR being the first thing that comes to mind... I'm sure he has other
pointers for you.

> Are there DID Method implementers interested in testing these recovery hooks or reviewing a draft?

Our organization (Digital Bazaar) would be interested in reviewing
drafts and doing an implementation or two (in time). As Adrian and
Christopher mentioned, recovery is an important aspects of DIDs that
we need to finish.

> We are seeking initial feedback over the next two weeks to determine interest in a unified specification. Pending community interest, we intend to submit this as a formal CCG Work Item and move toward registering these as a DID Extension.

Sounds good, that's a productive approach.

> We are looking for implementers interested in building wallet support, use case contributors with additional scenarios, and co-editors , co-sponsors to help shape the specification.

DB is happy to eventually build wallet support, provide use cases and
additional scenarios, and be a co-sponsor of the work. I'll leave it
to others from our organization to volunteer to be co-editor -- our
spec queue is pretty deep right now, so we might not be able to help
on that front just yet.

Thank you for putting something concrete forward, Amir! I think this
is going to be a really important contribution to the ecosystem!

-- manu

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

Received on Monday, 23 February 2026 16:01:13 UTC