Self-Sovereign Identity

Alex Preukschat, Drummond Reed

• Publisher: Manning
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781617296598
• eBook ISBN: 9781638351023
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

In Self-Sovereign Identity: Decentralized digital identity and verifiable credentials, you'll learn how SSI empowers us to receive digitally-signed credentials, store them in private wallets, and securely prove our online identities. Summary
In a world of changing privacy regulations, identity theft, and online anonymity, identity is a precious and complex concept. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is a set of technologies that move control of digital identity from third party "identity providers" directly to individuals, and it promises to be one of the most important trends for the coming decades. Personal data experts Drummond Reed and Alex Preukschat lay out a roadmap for a future of personal sovereignty powered by the Blockchain and cryptography. Cutting through technical jargon with dozens of practical cases, it presents a clear and compelling argument for why SSI is a paradigm shift, and how you can be ready to be prepared for it. About the technology
Trust on the internet is at an all-time low. Large corporations and institutions control our personal data because we've never had a simple, safe, strong way to prove who we are online. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) changes all that. About the book
In Self-Sovereign Identity: Decentralized digital identity and verifiable credentials, you'll learn how SSI empowers us to receive digitally-signed credentials, store them in private wallets, and securely prove our online identities. It combines a clear, jargon-free introduction to this blockchain-inspired paradigm shift with interesting essays written by its leading practitioners. Whether for property transfer, ebanking, frictionless travel, or personalized services, the SSI model for digital trust will reshape our collective future. What's inside
The architecture of SSI software and services
The technical, legal, and governance concepts behind SSI
How SSI affects global business industry-by-industry
Emerging standards for SSI About the reader
For technology and business readers. No prior SSI, cryptography, or blockchain experience required. About the authors
Drummond Reed is the Chief Trust Officer at Evernym, a technology leader in SSI. Alex Preukschat is the co-founder of SSIMeetup.org and AlianzaBlockchain.org. Table of Contents PART 1: AN INTRODUCTION TO SSI
1 Why the internet is missing an identity layer—and why SSI can finally provide one
2 The basic building blocks of SSI
3 Example scenarios showing how SSI works
4 SSI Scorecard: Major features and benefits of SSI
PART 2: SSI TECHNOLOGY
5 SSI architecture: The big picture
6 Basic cryptography techniques for SSI
7 Verifiable credentials
8 Decentralized identifiers
9 Digital wallets and digital agents
10 Decentralized key management
11 SSI governance frameworks
PART 3: DECENTRALIZATION AS A MODEL FOR LIFE
12 How open source software helps you control your self-sovereign identity
13 Cypherpunks: The origin of decentralization
14 Decentralized identity for a peaceful society
15 Belief systems as drivers for technology choices in decentralization
16 The origins of the SSI community
17 Identity is money
PART 4: HOW SSI WILL CHANGE YOUR BUSINESS
18 Explaining the value of SSI to business
19 The Internet of Things opportunity
20 Animal care and guardianship just became crystal clear
21 Open democracy, voting, and SSI
22 Healthcare supply chain powered by SSI
23 Canada: Enabling self-sovereign identity
24 From eIDAS to SSI in the European Union

Part 1 An introduction to SSI

Although it started in 2015, self-sovereign identity (SSI) as a technology, industry, and movement is still very young. Many people working directly in the digital identity industry are likely to be familiar with it, but to those working in other industries—especially outside of tech—it may be a brand-new concept.

Part 1 gives you everything you need to know to become conversant in SSI, no matter where you are coming from. It is organized into four chapters:

• Chapter 1 begins with the fundamental reasons we need digital identity and why the first two generations of solutions (centralized identity and federated identity) have not solved the problem. It explains the origins of SSI as a new internet identity model based on blockchain, cloud, and mobile computing technology and paints a picture of the impact SSI is already having in e-commerce, finance, healthcare, and travel.
• Chapter 2 introduces the seven basic building blocks of SSI—including digital credentials, digital wallets, digital agents, and blockchains—at a level that should be comfortable for non-technologists.
• Chapter 3 takes the seven building blocks from Chapter 2 and shows how they can be put together to solve different scenarios in digital trust.
• Chapter 4 introduces the SSI Scorecard as a tool for systematically evaluating the major features and benefits of SSI (a tool we use again in part 4 to evaluate the impact of SSI on various industries and market verticals).

1 Why the internet is missing an identity layer—and why SSI can finally provide one

Alex Preukschat and Drummond Reed

Self-sovereign identity—commonly abbreviated SSI—is a new model for digital identity on the internet: i.e., how we prove who we are to the websites, services, and apps with which we need to establish trusted relationships to access or protect private information. Driven by new technologies and standards in cryptography, distributed networks, cloud computing, and smartphones, SSI is a paradigm shift for digital identity similar to other technology paradigm shifts: for example, the shift from keyboard-driven user interfaces (e.g., MS-DOS) to graphical user interfaces (e.g., Windows, Mac, iOS), or the shift from dumb phones to smartphones.

However, the SSI paradigm shift is deeper than just a technology shift—it is a shift in the underlying infrastructure and power dynamics of the internet itself. In this way, it is closer to other infrastructure paradigm shifts such as those in transportation:

• The shift from horse travel to train travel
• The shift from train travel to automobile travel
• The shift from automobile travel to airplanes and jet travel

Each of these shifts in technology resulted in deeper, structural changes to the shape and dynamics of society and commerce. The same is true of the paradigm shift to SSI. While the details are evolving rapidly, the “big picture” of SSI that has already emerged is remarkably coherent and compelling—and this is what is driving adoption.

In this book, we endeavor to explain this SSI paradigm shift in the most approachable way possible. Our motivation is not to impose our vision of the world on you but to humbly convey the technological, business, and social movements that have come together to make SSI possible. Our starting point is this claim:

The Internet was built without an identity layer.

—Kim Cameron, Chief Architecture of Identity, Microsoft [1]

What did Kim Cameron—Microsoft’s chief architect for identity from 2004 to 2019—mean by that quote? What is an “identity layer?” Kim gives an answer in his groundbreaking series of essays called “The Laws of Identity,” published on his blog over a series of months in 2004 and 2005:

The Internet was built without a way to know who and what you are connecting to. This limits what we can do with it and exposes us to growing dangers. If we do nothing, we will face rapidly proliferating episodes of theft and deception that will cumulatively erode public trust in the Internet.

Kim was saying that when the internet was initially developed in the 1960s and 1970s by the U.S. military (sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA), the problem it was designed to solve was how to interconnect machines to share information and resources across multiple networks. The solution—packet-based data exchange and the TCP/IP protocol—was so brilliant that it finally enabled a true “network of networks” [1]. And the rest, as they say, is history.

What Kim was driving at, however, is that with the internet’s TCP/IP protocol, you only know the address of the machine you are connecting to. That tells you nothing about the person, organization, or thing responsible for that machine and communicating with you. (Hackers have demonstrated how to change a computer’s hardware [MAC] or IP address before it is sent to remote network devices. This makes it nearly impossible to rely on, or trust, current network-level identifiers.)

This seems like a fairly easy problem to solve—after all, people and organizations built the internet, and we control (or at least we think we do) all the “things” that are using it. So, how hard could it be to design a simple, standard way to identify the person, organization, or thing you are dealing with over the internet?

The answer turns out to be: very, very hard.

Why? In a nutshell, the original internet was not very big. The people using the network were mostly academic computer scientists. Most of them knew each other, and they all needed access to expensive machines and sophisticated technical skills to participate. So even though the internet was designed to be decentralized and to have no single points of failure, early on it was effectively a relatively small club.

Needless to say, that has changed completely. There are now billions of people and multiple billions of devices on the internet, and almost all of them are strangers. In this environment, the unfortunate truth is that there are many, many people who want to deceive you about who or what you are dealing with over the internet. Identity (or the lack of it) is one of the primary sources of cybercrime.

1.1 How bad has the problem become?

Recall the final sentence of Kim Cameron’s 2005 prediction about the internet’s missing identity layer: “If we do nothing, we will face rapidly proliferating episodes of theft and deception that will cumulatively erode public trust in the Internet.”

Despite all the efforts to solve the internet identity problem, the lack of a breakthrough solution has proved Kim’s prognosis true in spades. Never mind that by 2017, the average business user had to keep track of 191 passwords [2] or that username/password management has become the most hated consumer experience on the internet. That’s just an inconvenience.

Where’s the foul? The deeper damage is in cybercrime, fraud, economic friction, and the ever-growing threats to our online privacy.

The litany of statistics goes on and on:

• IBM President and CEO Ginni Rometty described cybercrime as “the g...

Table of contents

• Self-Sovereign Identity
• Copyright
• dedication
• contents
• front matter
• Part 1 An introduction to SSI
• 1 Why the internet is missing an identity layer—and why SSI can finally provide one
• 2 The basic building blocks of SSI
• 3 Example scenarios showing how SSI works
• 4 SSI Scorecard: Major features and benefits of SSI
• Part 2 SSI technology
• 5 SSI architecture: The big picture
• 6 Basic cryptography techniques for SSI
• 7 Verifiable credentials
• 8 Decentralized identifiers
• 9 Digital wallets and digital agents
• 10 Decentralized key management
• 11 SSI governance frameworks
• Part 3 Decentralization as a model for life
• 12 How open source software helps you control your self-sovereign identity
• 13 Cypherpunks: The origin of decentralization
• 14 Decentralized identity for a peaceful society
• 15 Belief systems as drivers for technology choices in decentralization
• 16 The origins of the SSI community
• 17 Identity is money
• Part 4 How SSI will change your business
• 18 Explaining the value of SSI to business
• 19 The Internet of Things opportunity
• 20 Animal care and guardianship just became crystal clear
• 21 Open democracy, voting, and SSI
• 22 Healthcare supply chain powered by SSI
• 23 Canada: Enabling self-sovereign identity
• 24 From eIDAS to SSI in the European Union
• appendix A Additional Livebook chapters
• appendix B Landmark essays on SSI
• appendix C The path to self-sovereign identity
• appendix D Identity in the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem
• appendix E The principles of SSI
• index
• contributing authors