I have a similar background, and I also know some of the people active in the DID community, and I spent a couple of years trying to get them to explain to me w

I have a similar background, and I also know some of the people active in the DID community, and I spent a couple of years trying to get them to explain to me what problem it solved or show me a working application using the tech. My take is that it is a) X.509 re-born with different encoding (JSON-LD vs BER or PEM) and b) a scheme to promote use of certain blockchains for a purpose that blockchains don't suit well.