At the foundation of decentralized digital identity is the concept of a Decentralized Identifier (DID), a new type of globally unique identifier that uses cryptography to prove ownership. DIDs enable individuals to control their digital data and communications in a privacy-preserving way, without requiring permission or monitoring from any other party.
As of November 2021, DIDs are pending approval by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to become a new Web standard—the first new identifier the W3C would approve since the URL.
But Google, Apple, and Mozilla have filed formal objections to block the standard — which we’ll cover and rebut in detail.
In this webinar, we dived into:
Watch the recording:Sections:
05:38 – The controversy at the W3C: Centralization vs. Decentralization 10:20 – What are decentralized identifiers (DIDs)? 17:50 – Benefits of DIDs for individuals and organizations 20:52 – What role do DIDs play in SSI, and how are they used today? 24:26 – A history of the ‘DID Spec’ and the work done at the W3C 28:57 – The four formal objections made by the browser vendors, and our response to each 47:28 – The future of the Web is decentralized 49:40 – Q&A |
Drummond has spent over two decades working in internet identity, security, privacy, and governance. He joined Evernym as chief trust officer after Evernym acquired Respect Network, where he was co-founder and CEO. At the W3C, he is co-editor of the DID (Decentralized Identifiers) specification. At the Trust over IP Foundation, Drummond is a member of the Steering Committee and co-chair of the Governance Stack Working Group and Concepts and Terminology Working Group. At the Sovrin Foundation, he was one of the founding trustees and serves as co-chair of the Sovrin Governance Framework Working Group. For 10 years, he served as co-chair of the OASIS XDI Technical Committee, a semantic data interchange protocol that implements privacy by design. Prior to starting Respect Network, Drummond was executive director of two industry foundations: the Information Card Foundation and the Open Identity Exchange. He has also served as a founding board member of the OpenID Foundation, ISTPA, XDI.org, and Identity Commons. In 2002, he received the Digital Identity Pioneer Award from Digital ID World, and in 2013 he was cited as an OASIS Distinguished Contributor.
