Oddbean

Self Sovereign Identity: There Is No Free Lunch? It seems that any kind of self sovereign identity (SSI) verification mechanism must involve effort on the part of the user— because the lower the effort required, the easier it is to game. This effort—inherent friction—will be a challenge to adoption. SSI’s necessary verification effort can be compensated for by making it worthwhile for the user; by making the SSI, once acquired, powerful and multifunctional. However, that in turn makes identity theft more profitable. Unless I’m missing something, there seems to be no escape here. Social recovery is often mentioned as a way to harden SSI. But if not done in the meatspace this can be subject to man-in-the-middle attacks. And eventually, as people’s bodies get more integrated with digital hardware (a la neuralink), the advantage of meatspace verification will diminish. I’m not saying Self Sovereign Identity isn’t a worthy goal to pursue, just trying to identify what fundamental challenges we will be facing as this technology is rolled out. Thoughts?

Thanks for the valuable input. IMHO and very humble one, the only way SSI will gain traction is when users have a real gain. Unfortunately it's not enough what SSI has to offer now. Privacy and dataownership means nothing to the average joe so they don't care. Only when they have a real win they will use, adopt it. Only way to accomplish this is real and substantial compensation for people's data. Reward them for their data and info. Use it to feed companies directly their needs, wants and desires.

Maybe identity is just an overrated surveillance and control tool. All spiritual schools work on detaching/desidentifying with your ego-identity - for a reason? I am not my identity and my identity is not me. Never will be. Reputation in private/public key networks is a tool to reach confidence values in trusting each other/ my friends friends. That's probably all that is needed for a properly working free society.