5 ms·

Open, Decentralized, Identity Ecosystem

94 points by Fiahil 8y ago

niedbalski 8y ago
openid, is that you? welcome back!
- djsumdog 8y ago
  That's the problem with groups like this. Are we really going to get back to the point where we can just type in our own identity providers? Stackexchange was the last big site that I used which still had OpenID support and it had less than 1% usage: https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-decline-of-openid/ https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-decline-of-openid/
  - sliken 8y ago
    Seems like the biggest problem with OpenID is they had a marketing push, multiple sites (like google, yahoo, and facebook) bragged about it. The problem is large companies could grab about providing OpenID, while not allowing logins from any other OpenID provider. So you needed an OpenID account/login per provider... which is useless.
ForHackernews 8y ago
RIP Persona https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/Persona https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/Per...
identity-haver 8y ago
That's a really interesting mix of partner companies: blockchain, healthcare, banking, IT consultants, payments, Microsoft, telecoms, enterprise identity providers. Basically everyone except Google and Facebook, who are competing for web identity supremacy and far ahead of everyone else (and Amazon, who could do the same with their number of users).
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  It tells you exactly what you'd expect: That everyone wants to work together at this except for the monopolies who want to ensure they can control it.
g45y45 8y ago
its missing an http to https redirect. this is important! How can i trust this group with identity if they cant even get secure websites right.
- deweller 8y ago
  The site appears to be hosted through github pages [1] via Cloudflare. Is that even an option at github? 1: https://github.com/decentralized-identity/decentralized-identity.github.io https://github.com/decentralized-identity/decentralized-iden...
Communitivity 8y ago
I worked with some of the people involved in this back when I was on the OASIS XDI TC, before my then employer 'suggested' I leave working on standards and focus on BD. The DID people I know are smart and passionate, with a lot of domain experience. I hope that this gains wide adoption.
motohagiography 8y ago
Key problem for them to solve is not data, it's legitimacy. The use cases for digital identity were things like getting speeding tickets, fines, taxation, collections, and other social management uses. Basically the stuff that nobody wants unless they want other people to be subject to it. It meant that digital identity must be imposed, and so the customers for it needed to be in the position to do so. There are lots of systems, markets and communities that work just fine without registered identities, and arguably the only thing that doesn't work with collateralized social identities is subjugation. The goal seems to be to create something with enough value that it will be worth federating to, but the legal and political factors in governing that federation will be on the order of complexity of creating another agency the size of something like the ITU.
- carapace 8y ago
  Hernando De Soto wrote a book called "The Mystery of Capital" and in it he points out that the ability to enforce laws and contracts depends on the ability to apply consequences to the people correctly identified who break them. For example, an electric utility can't provide power to a community if it can't identify and shut off power to the people who can't or won't pay their bills. De Soto points out that e.g. having a recognized official title to your own home not only enables the landowners economically, it also gives them something to lose so that the government has leverage to enforce laws and contracts.
  - motohagiography 8y ago
    I heard him speak once, and he spoke about titles for land in shanty towns as a potential solution to some poverty as well. Identity tech marketing people go on about it extends franchise to people for public services, and solves the problem of the "unbanked," which should return results in greater social equity. There is a large social justice aspect to it, where people engaged in distributing benefits need to know who to give them to. Of course, the criticism of this is that is what borders are for, where citizens are presumably equal within them, and detailed identity attributes for benefits and equity is a recipe for facilitating totalitarian urges. This gets very political very quickly. Identity is an ancient problem. Like old testament ancient problem where even back then numbering people allegedly gets you plagues. (presumably because when you get lots of people together and living longer, that's what happens) Digital identity tech is a fascinating, difficult problem that is a proxy for governance in general. Vendors would prefer not to freight their products with that, but it's really the ur-problem.
stevetodd 8y ago
I like decentralized identity though I feel like it either needs a killer app that uses it or a better value proposition. As it stands, I don’t see non-technical people jumping to it unless they have a technical friend telling them too. I hope someone can tell me I’m missing something.
- canadaduane 8y ago
  I think this will be part of a much larger social movement--the distribution of trust across networks as an incremental improvement over the gateway/database/single-point-of-failure model we've organized ourselves around right now. I presented a little bit about this (how decentralized identity & decentralized apps intersect) here: https://decentralizedsummit.com/agenda/duane-johnson/ https://decentralizedsummit.com/agenda/duane-johnson/
treelovinhippie 8y ago
If all of these decentralized identity companies truly want an open and self-sovereign system, the big question is: are they willing to shutdown their operations once that is achieved? Or are they all attempting to monetize identity with various business models that are against the stated goal? Identity should be owned by the individual, and the universal decentralized/distributed identity protocol should be owned by the commons. Any for-profit business model for identity (90% of the member companies) will inevitably seek to silo and exploit data to achieve monopoly and extract economic rents.

94 points by Fiahil 8y ago

niedbalski 8y ago

openid, is that you? welcome back!

djsumdog 8y ago
That's the problem with groups like this. Are we really going to get back to the point where we can just type in our own identity providers? Stackexchange was the last big site that I used which still had OpenID support and it had less than 1% usage: https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-decline-of-openid/ https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-decline-of-openid/
- sliken 8y ago
  Seems like the biggest problem with OpenID is they had a marketing push, multiple sites (like google, yahoo, and facebook) bragged about it. The problem is large companies could grab about providing OpenID, while not allowing logins from any other OpenID provider. So you needed an OpenID account/login per provider... which is useless.

ForHackernews 8y ago

RIP Persona https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/Persona https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Mozilla/Per...

identity-haver 8y ago

That's a really interesting mix of partner companies: blockchain, healthcare, banking, IT consultants, payments, Microsoft, telecoms, enterprise identity providers. Basically everyone except Google and Facebook, who are competing for web identity supremacy and far ahead of everyone else (and Amazon, who could do the same with their number of users).

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
It tells you exactly what you'd expect: That everyone wants to work together at this except for the monopolies who want to ensure they can control it.

g45y45 8y ago

its missing an http to https redirect. this is important! How can i trust this group with identity if they cant even get secure websites right.

deweller 8y ago
The site appears to be hosted through github pages [1] via Cloudflare. Is that even an option at github? 1: https://github.com/decentralized-identity/decentralized-identity.github.io https://github.com/decentralized-identity/decentralized-iden...

Communitivity 8y ago

I worked with some of the people involved in this back when I was on the OASIS XDI TC, before my then employer 'suggested' I leave working on standards and focus on BD. The DID people I know are smart and passionate, with a lot of domain experience. I hope that this gains wide adoption.

motohagiography 8y ago

Key problem for them to solve is not data, it's legitimacy. The use cases for digital identity were things like getting speeding tickets, fines, taxation, collections, and other social management uses. Basically the stuff that nobody wants unless they want other people to be subject to it. It meant that digital identity must be imposed, and so the customers for it needed to be in the position to do so. There are lots of systems, markets and communities that work just fine without registered identities, and arguably the only thing that doesn't work with collateralized social identities is subjugation. The goal seems to be to create something with enough value that it will be worth federating to, but the legal and political factors in governing that federation will be on the order of complexity of creating another agency the size of something like the ITU.

carapace 8y ago
Hernando De Soto wrote a book called "The Mystery of Capital" and in it he points out that the ability to enforce laws and contracts depends on the ability to apply consequences to the people correctly identified who break them. For example, an electric utility can't provide power to a community if it can't identify and shut off power to the people who can't or won't pay their bills. De Soto points out that e.g. having a recognized official title to your own home not only enables the landowners economically, it also gives them something to lose so that the government has leverage to enforce laws and contracts.
- motohagiography 8y ago
  I heard him speak once, and he spoke about titles for land in shanty towns as a potential solution to some poverty as well. Identity tech marketing people go on about it extends franchise to people for public services, and solves the problem of the "unbanked," which should return results in greater social equity. There is a large social justice aspect to it, where people engaged in distributing benefits need to know who to give them to. Of course, the criticism of this is that is what borders are for, where citizens are presumably equal within them, and detailed identity attributes for benefits and equity is a recipe for facilitating totalitarian urges. This gets very political very quickly. Identity is an ancient problem. Like old testament ancient problem where even back then numbering people allegedly gets you plagues. (presumably because when you get lots of people together and living longer, that's what happens) Digital identity tech is a fascinating, difficult problem that is a proxy for governance in general. Vendors would prefer not to freight their products with that, but it's really the ur-problem.

stevetodd 8y ago

I like decentralized identity though I feel like it either needs a killer app that uses it or a better value proposition. As it stands, I don’t see non-technical people jumping to it unless they have a technical friend telling them too. I hope someone can tell me I’m missing something.

canadaduane 8y ago
I think this will be part of a much larger social movement--the distribution of trust across networks as an incremental improvement over the gateway/database/single-point-of-failure model we've organized ourselves around right now. I presented a little bit about this (how decentralized identity & decentralized apps intersect) here: https://decentralizedsummit.com/agenda/duane-johnson/ https://decentralizedsummit.com/agenda/duane-johnson/

treelovinhippie 8y ago

If all of these decentralized identity companies truly want an open and self-sovereign system, the big question is: are they willing to shutdown their operations once that is achieved? Or are they all attempting to monetize identity with various business models that are against the stated goal? Identity should be owned by the individual, and the universal decentralized/distributed identity protocol should be owned by the commons. Any for-profit business model for identity (90% of the member companies) will inevitably seek to silo and exploit data to achieve monopoly and extract economic rents.