Re: Self-sovereign identity and payments (was Re: WebCrypto - In "progress" since 2012)

On 30 April 2016 at 15:39, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:

> On 04/30/2016 09:17 AM, Timothy Holborn wrote:
> > how can we universally agree on the problem about 'human' as to
> > supports the spirits of law, humility, shared values, human rights
> > and all such things as to bring us together in a manner that says we
> >  are flesh not tools.
>
> Christopher Allen (co-editor of TLS and organizer for the Rebooting Web
> of Trust Workshops) has written a thought provoking piece on
> self-sovereign identity:
>
>
> http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2016/04/the-path-to-self-soverereign-identity.html
>
> ... which got a fair bit of focus at the Internet Identity Workshop last
> week.
>
> He wrote it also in preparation for the United Nations ID2020 event:
>
> http://id2020summit.org/
>
> and the second Rebooting Web of Trust workshop:
>
> http://www.weboftrust.info/
>
> While I don't think we'll ever universally agree on the items you list
> above before trying to solve a subset of them, all of the initiatives
> listed above are working toward some of the things that you want to see,
> Tim.
>

It was really nice to see the W3C verifiable claims work mentioned

Essentially every proposal to date ive seen from this group is what I would
call a "non additive" solution.  What I mean by that is, that it offers a
number of possibilities of what is a valid identity.  ie identity is
defined from a white list of options (A | B | C) and all else is excluded.
This does not scale to the web.  And I Think the piece is partly a post
mortem about that experience.

I think the work at the W3C is the first work that is towards a "additive"
or "open" approach.  It means *any* identity system can work, and here is
how to support A | B | C -- add more to the list.

AND is better than OR.  Hopefully that concept of exclusivity, rather than
exclusivity, can become the basis of identity and payments work and the
filter through to the specs.


>
> -- manu
>
> PS: While the Web Payments CG is cc'd on this email, I suggest we drop
> that mailing list if this goes down an "identity" path.
>

Only if it goes off topic -- we should not censor topics preemtively.

I think a payments system needs to be layered on top of a robust identity
solution, and we dont have that today.  Identity is fundamental to payments
(even more fundamental than security) simply because you need to be 100%
sure where you are sending something to avoid money getting lost.


>
> --
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> JSON-LD Best Practice: Context Caching
> https://manu.sporny.org/2016/json-ld-context-caching/
>
>