Authors

Allende López, M.

Year

2020

Abstract

As the name, self-sovereign identity, can be a bit misleading, it is important to clarify that self-sovereign identity does not entail individuals certifying their own identity. As long as societies are structured in non-anarchical political systems with well-defined government structures that guarantee and enforce laws while allowing for the establishment of public and private trust frameworks, the public administrations will still have the final sovereignty of the identification of citizens.

Therefore self-sovereign identity proposes sovereignty for the individual not in the issuance but in the management of their identity. Firstly, this model enables sovereignty for individuals over their digital assets and credentials -such as digital passports, digital diplomas, digital property titles, and tokenized currencies such as dollar, euro, pound, or pesos- using digital wallets that can take the form of a mobile app. Secondly, when the subject of these digital assets and credentials presents them to a third party to prove ownership, the third party does not need to reach out to the issuer to verify them, as they can go against a public, decentralized, and immutable registry, such as a blockchain network, where the cryptographic proofs of the asset or credential were registered and are maintained by the issuer in an standardized and trustable way.

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