Establishing Self Sovereign Identity with Blockchain

Digital identity is a divisive topic. This is especially true of the Self-Sovereign Identity systems and 15 standards being established today using decentralised architectures with blockchain technology 16 foundations. 17 Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) places individuals in control of their personal information, practitioners 18 draw an analogy with physical wallets because a collection of digital identity credentials held in an 19 SSI digital wallet are used within the digital realm in a similar way to paper and plastic credentials 20 used in everyday life. 21 Fundamentally, the SSI approach serves to wrest control of digital identity from long established 22 centralised systems and authorities; democratising and helping to rebalance the distribution of online 23 power between individuals and institutions. 24 SSI represents a paradigm shift in the way digital identity is commonly managed and controlled 25 today, presenting a serious alternative to many existing business models. This can provoke vested 26 interests and opposition from global scale institutions and political structures that rely on their 27 centralised digital identity infrastructures. 28 This research topic aims to provide a rich resource for identity practitioners, researchers, 29 technologists, adopters, and policymakers to understand and advance the subject of SSI. While there 30 is a wealth of publicly available material, this collection provides the rigour of community peer 31 review and the trust and confidence that this engenders. thinking and value accounting practice and the need to design compelling value propositions to drive 66 SSI adoption that can play a part in addressing these concerns. 67 A common misconception of SSI is that the digital credentials are all self-certified and cannot be 68 trusted in the way credentials issued by centralised trust authorities are. This is not true and in fact, 69 there is a sizable opportunity for today's trusted credential issuers to deploy their credentials into new 70 decentralised channels that will provide security, privacy, and process efficiency benefits for all 71 parties. Holders can take control of their data and eliminate the need for passwords. Issuers and 72 relying parties dramatically reduce their exposure to data security risk by reducing their reliance on 73 centralised identity silos that are a magnet for cybercrime.