[csixty4]

Somebody introduces a new technology to address these concerns every couple years and it doesn't go anywhere. These aren't actually problems to a lot of users. That's the real problem that needs to be solved - awareness. And that's a lot harder than taking the identity solutions we came up with in the Identity 2.0 days and adding a blockchain.

[capableweb]

> Somebody introduces a new technology to address these concerns every couple years and it doesn't go anywhere.

That's the problem, we need protocols and standards, then laws to enforce those, not _technology_. The DID specification is a "old" attempt at this, I remember first coming across DIDs back in 2015-2016 sometime, so DIDs are hardly new.

> we came up with in the Identity 2.0 days and adding a blockchain

Good thing no one has suggested to add any blockchains! Commentators here on HN would do themselves a service by reading the actual specification before commenting, seems to be a common misconception that DIDs has something to do with blockchains.

[drdeca]

While of course it is just one of many (alongside e.g. “just use a public key”(or hash of one or something. I don’t know the details), and “just use a github username”, when looking at the example resolver, and trying to read the docs, my impression was that a fair proportion of the examples given were blockchain related?

So, that could be part of the reason for the misconception.

I was first introduced to it by the, bold post on the Protocol Labs (the people behind IPFS) blog, about ION as a particular type of DID (sorry, “type of” is probably not quite the right terminology, but I’m not sure what the preferred terminology is) which appears to use the Bitcoin chain (but in a way that involves only very few transactions and very little on-chain data).

Personally I found the FAQ page for DIDs to be a little,

well, it isn’t particularly focused on assisting the reader in evaluating “should I care about this”?

I guess in some ways it seemed a third of the from being a normal FAQ and being a specification, or, not a specification but a, documentation of policy and plans etc.

[westurner]

> Somebody introduces a new technology to address these concerns every couple years and it doesn't go anywhere. These aren't actually problems to a lot of users.

"Use Cases and Requirements for Decentralized Identifiers" https://www.w3.org/TR/did-use-cases/

> 2. Use Cases: Online shopper, Vehicle assemblies, Confidential Customer Engagement, Accessing Master Data of Entities, Transferable Skills Credentials, Cross-platform User-driven Sharing, Pseudonymous Work, Pseudonymity within a supply chain, Digital Permanent Resident Card, Importing retro toys, Public authority identity credentials (eIDAS), Correlation-controlled Services

And then, IIUC W3C Verifiable Credentials / ld-proofs can be signed with W3C DID keys - that can also be generated or registered centrally, like hosted wallets or custody services. There are many Use Cases for Verifiable Credentials: https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-use-cases/ :

> 3. User Needs: Education, Retail, Finance, Healthcare, Professional Credentials, Legal Identity, Devices

> 4. User Tasks: Issue Claim, Assert Claim, Verify Claim, Store / Move Claim, Retrieve Claim, Revoke Claim

> 5. Focal Use Cases: Citizenship by Parentage, Expert Dive Instructor, International Travel with Minor and Upgrade

> 6. User Sequences: How a Verifiable Credential Might Be Created, How a Verifiable Credential Might Be Used

IIRC DHS funded some of the W3C DID and Verified Credentials specification efforts. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26758099

There's probably already a good way to bridge between sub-SKU GS1 schema.org/identifier on barcodes and QR codes and with DIDs. For GS1, you must register a ~namespace prefix and then you can use the rest of the available address space within the barcode or QR code IIUC.

DIDs can replace ORCIDs - which you can also just generate a new one of - for academics seeking to group their ScholarlyArticles by a better identifier than a transient university email address.

The new UUID formats may or may not be optionally useful in conjunction with W3C DID, VC, and Verifiable News, etc. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28088213

When would a DID be a better choice than a UUID?