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This article avoids the elephant in the room: nobody except cryptocurrency nuts asked for this. The “Decentralised” part of DID should give a hint that this is

This article avoids the elephant in the room: nobody except cryptocurrency nuts asked for this. The “Decentralised” part of DID should give a hint that this is yet another attempt to make crypto relevant to the real world outside of bypassing sanctions, paying for drugs, or extorting hacking victims. Web 3.0 failed because cryptocurrencies can’t support the high bandwidth and low latency required. So the same people came up with DID, which can tolerate multi-hour transaction delays and storage capacities measured in single-digit kilobytes. Most of the criticisms against Web 3.0 still apply to DID. It can be impossible to revoke, as the article stated. Which means if grandma’s wallet is hacked, she can be impersonated forever by the hacker, and not even the government can help her with this. “Yay, censorship resistant!” many will proclaim. (Loudly) Okay, name me one instance (1) where a citizen of a western country had their identity censored in any sense by their government.

bawolff 3y ago
> Okay, name me one instance (1) where a citizen of a western country had their identity censored in any sense by their government. I don't think this is the problem DID is trying to solve, but the article mentions illegal immigrants and stateless people.
- hughesjj 3y ago
  Also, the entire witness protection program, whistleblower protection, certain government 'contractors' Agreed this isn't the problem DID is trying to solve from what I can tell though. As an aside, it's hard for me to read DID as anything other than disassociative identity disorder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disord...
_akhe 3y ago
The crypto phase ended up accidentally showing us why centralized authority is important. It sounds great on paper: If we can simply enforce a protocol, then we don't need authority, right? But we still have to trust who enforces the protocol. If we rely on trusts and exchanges to any degree, for example, to enable faster, more convenient transactions, or for user experience, then those trusts (banks) cannot be running off with the customer deposits like BitConnect and FTX did. The trust should be insured and should have to follow normal bank and currency exchange regulations. When you add in all the banking infrastructure that would be needed to bring cryptocurrencies up to speed we'd end up with a clunkier version of what we have (we already have fast digital banking, and cash is already anonymous and instant). Regarding crypto for content chains: Basically the same ideas, if certain peers are trusted to host, serve, and/or broker content in some way, how do you trust those parties, or if there are content "vaults" off-chain to enable faster access to data, how do we know it wasn't tampered with off-chain? Can't store it on chain feasibly either, especially if the content is say full-length films. I think blockchain for both cryptocurrencies and content chains is better suited for smaller peer networks where you know you can trust the node hosts and the cryptography is used more for keeping nodes in sync, and for lower-level security, not as a replacement for trust. Or if you don't trust the node hosts, then the trusted party is whoever maintains the "peer list" - but that's just a road toward what our Federal Reserve, or our Wikipedia, can already do much better with consumer banking and open-source contributions (respectively).
spacebanana7 3y ago
> Okay, name me one instance (1) where a citizen of a western country had their identity censored in any sense by their government. Eugene Shvidler‘s sanctioning by the UK poisoned his identity. A UK-US dual citizen living in Britain who had Russian business dealings. The sanctions are devastating to personal freedom. Beyond the direct financial impact, they make it very difficult to travel, engage in charity or use digital goods. You might argue he deserved it for making money in Russia, but the lack of due process is astounding. His commercial behaviour predates any legal prohibition and he didn’t get to argue his case in front of a judge/jury before a punishment was installed. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/jul/19/sanctions-regime-put-to-legal-test-in-uk-as-oligarch-seeks-release-of-assets https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/jul/19/sanctions-regime...
- kiitos 3y ago
  Sanctions are an important component of our society, in the broadest sense. They are net good, not bad.
  - spacebanana7 3y ago
    Sanctions are effective tools at undermining the economic & industrial base of an adversary. They’re poor tools as substitutes for criminal penalties for local residents.
    - kiitos 3y ago
      Less "adversary" as evaluated by a specific entity, more "bad actor" as evaluated by the collective. Which is the intent. Of course nobody issuing sanctions specifically intends them to be criminal penalties for local (target) residents, it's nonsensical anyway as the issuer(s) generally don't have any kind of criminal authority in the relevant jurisdictions.
      - spacebanana7 3y ago
        Suffragettes, civil rights activists and Vietnam war protesters would’ve all been considered “bad actors” by their democratic governments at stages of their journey.
megadal 3y ago
> Most of the criticisms against Web 3.0 still apply to DID. It can be impossible to revoke, as the article stated. Which means if grandma’s wallet is hacked, she can be impersonated forever by the hacker, and not even the government can help her with this. VCs have credentialStatus, the id property of which is supposed to be a URI resolving to an RDF defined object dictating the status. This means the issuer can just update the entity living behind that URI to revoke bad credentials. https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model-2.0/#status https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model-2.0/#status
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  If there's a central revocation list, then it's a centralised identity with a centralised authority. That's the opposite if the "distributed" in DID, at least in the sense that the pro-Web-3.0 crypto fans are claiming.
  - megadal 3y ago
    Again, you're conflating DID with VC improperly. VC is an extension built on top of DID. It's not decentralized Verifiable Credentials, it's just Verifiable Credentials. The entire article is about VC, and refers to VC as DID (which is also what you're wrongly doing). It's like criticizing the collective web standard based on REST. REST is not the web. Also, the part that makes VC decentralized is the alternative (OIDC authorization code flow). VC doesn't require the issuer for verification. (So basically the user has control over attestation of information about their identity, not some third party) That means even though the Gov issued you an ID they can't track every time you have your credentials verified.. it works exactly like a physical ID. It's issued by the government, but the government isn't there every time you need to show ID. Some might consider that an invasion of privacy if they were.
Animats 3y ago
> Web 3.0 failed because cryptocurrencies can’t support the high bandwidth and low latency required. Er, no.[1] [1] https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/

bawolff 3y ago

> Okay, name me one instance (1) where a citizen of a western country had their identity censored in any sense by their government. I don't think this is the problem DID is trying to solve, but the article mentions illegal immigrants and stateless people.

hughesjj 3y ago
Also, the entire witness protection program, whistleblower protection, certain government 'contractors' Agreed this isn't the problem DID is trying to solve from what I can tell though. As an aside, it's hard for me to read DID as anything other than disassociative identity disorder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disord...

_akhe 3y ago

The crypto phase ended up accidentally showing us why centralized authority is important. It sounds great on paper: If we can simply enforce a protocol, then we don't need authority, right? But we still have to trust who enforces the protocol. If we rely on trusts and exchanges to any degree, for example, to enable faster, more convenient transactions, or for user experience, then those trusts (banks) cannot be running off with the customer deposits like BitConnect and FTX did. The trust should be insured and should have to follow normal bank and currency exchange regulations. When you add in all the banking infrastructure that would be needed to bring cryptocurrencies up to speed we'd end up with a clunkier version of what we have (we already have fast digital banking, and cash is already anonymous and instant). Regarding crypto for content chains: Basically the same ideas, if certain peers are trusted to host, serve, and/or broker content in some way, how do you trust those parties, or if there are content "vaults" off-chain to enable faster access to data, how do we know it wasn't tampered with off-chain? Can't store it on chain feasibly either, especially if the content is say full-length films. I think blockchain for both cryptocurrencies and content chains is better suited for smaller peer networks where you know you can trust the node hosts and the cryptography is used more for keeping nodes in sync, and for lower-level security, not as a replacement for trust. Or if you don't trust the node hosts, then the trusted party is whoever maintains the "peer list" - but that's just a road toward what our Federal Reserve, or our Wikipedia, can already do much better with consumer banking and open-source contributions (respectively).

spacebanana7 3y ago

> Okay, name me one instance (1) where a citizen of a western country had their identity censored in any sense by their government. Eugene Shvidler‘s sanctioning by the UK poisoned his identity. A UK-US dual citizen living in Britain who had Russian business dealings. The sanctions are devastating to personal freedom. Beyond the direct financial impact, they make it very difficult to travel, engage in charity or use digital goods. You might argue he deserved it for making money in Russia, but the lack of due process is astounding. His commercial behaviour predates any legal prohibition and he didn’t get to argue his case in front of a judge/jury before a punishment was installed. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/jul/19/sanctions-regime-put-to-legal-test-in-uk-as-oligarch-seeks-release-of-assets https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/jul/19/sanctions-regime...

kiitos 3y ago
Sanctions are an important component of our society, in the broadest sense. They are net good, not bad.
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  Sanctions are effective tools at undermining the economic & industrial base of an adversary. They’re poor tools as substitutes for criminal penalties for local residents.
  - kiitos 3y ago
    Less "adversary" as evaluated by a specific entity, more "bad actor" as evaluated by the collective. Which is the intent. Of course nobody issuing sanctions specifically intends them to be criminal penalties for local (target) residents, it's nonsensical anyway as the issuer(s) generally don't have any kind of criminal authority in the relevant jurisdictions.
    - spacebanana7 3y ago
      Suffragettes, civil rights activists and Vietnam war protesters would’ve all been considered “bad actors” by their democratic governments at stages of their journey.

megadal 3y ago

> Most of the criticisms against Web 3.0 still apply to DID. It can be impossible to revoke, as the article stated. Which means if grandma’s wallet is hacked, she can be impersonated forever by the hacker, and not even the government can help her with this. VCs have credentialStatus, the id property of which is supposed to be a URI resolving to an RDF defined object dictating the status. This means the issuer can just update the entity living behind that URI to revoke bad credentials. https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model-2.0/#status https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model-2.0/#status

jiggawatts 3y ago
If there's a central revocation list, then it's a centralised identity with a centralised authority. That's the opposite if the "distributed" in DID, at least in the sense that the pro-Web-3.0 crypto fans are claiming.
- megadal 3y ago
  Again, you're conflating DID with VC improperly. VC is an extension built on top of DID. It's not decentralized Verifiable Credentials, it's just Verifiable Credentials. The entire article is about VC, and refers to VC as DID (which is also what you're wrongly doing). It's like criticizing the collective web standard based on REST. REST is not the web. Also, the part that makes VC decentralized is the alternative (OIDC authorization code flow). VC doesn't require the issuer for verification. (So basically the user has control over attestation of information about their identity, not some third party) That means even though the Gov issued you an ID they can't track every time you have your credentials verified.. it works exactly like a physical ID. It's issued by the government, but the government isn't there every time you need to show ID. Some might consider that an invasion of privacy if they were.

Animats 3y ago

> Web 3.0 failed because cryptocurrencies can’t support the high bandwidth and low latency required. Er, no.[1] [1] https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/