Self-sovereign identity would let people own the digital information that identifies them and choose when to share it.
The ID information will still need to be established or underwritten by centralised institutions.
In April 2018, an American company IBM joined a little-known not-for-profit alliance called the Sovrin Foundation. Now they are building their own purpose-built blockchain, which will be used to enable 'self-sovereign identity'.
Self-sovereign identity (SSI) has recently become the central idea of concepts concerning digital identity and data privacy. It describes a state in which people can own the digital information that identifies them and choose when to share and when not to share it, without a need to rely on a third party (e.g. online social networks, businesses or governments).
Surely, it's not only the Sovrin Foundation that has identified the blockchain as a means for establishing such a state, but also a growing number of startups. However, while decentralised blockchains would appear to offer a more privacy-respecting means of proving identity online than social networks, for instance, the identities they substantiate will ultimately still need to be underwritten and confirmed by centralised institutions.
Conceived as a "global public utility," this ledger will allow a user to convert their personal info (e.g. name, age, gender) into an encrypted decentralised identifier (DID) stored on the Sovrin blockchain.
Via the use of cryptographic 'zero-knowledge' proofs, these DIDs will then be used to confirm to third parties that the user has the credentials or characteristics they say they have, all without revealing what these credentials or characteristics exactly are.
However, while self-sovereign identity looks set to make online identification safer and quicker, there is a limit to the decentralisation being offered by the above organisations. That is, the ID information they'll confirm will still need to be established or underwritten by centralised institutions: our names, ages, genders and citizenships will still need to be officially recognised by governments or governmental departments before they can be verified on any blockchain, for instance.
So, the aim of SSI is not to replace traditional central governments, but rather to make proving one's online ID much more efficient and much less personally compromising. And in that respect it will most likely succeed.
“By creating a global digital identity system, Sovrin is trying to make the online world as authentic and as interactive as the physical world,” said Phillip Windley, the chair the Sovrin Foundation.
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