Abstract
In recent times, with the advent of blockchain technology, there is an optimism surrounding the concept of self-sovereign identity which is regarded to have an influential effect on how we interact with each other over the Internet in future. There are a few works in the literature which examine different aspects of self-sovereign identity. Unfortunately, the existing works are not methodological and comprehensive at all. Moreover, there exist different notions of what the term self-sovereign identity means. To exploit its full potential, it is essential to ensure a common understanding in a formal way. This paper aims to achieve this goal by providing the first-ever formal and rigorous treatment of the concept of self-sovereign identity using a mathematical model. This paper examines the properties that a self-sovereign identity should have and explores the impact of self-sovereign identity over the laws of identity. It also highlights the essential life-cycles of an identity management system and inter-relates how the notion of self-sovereign identity can be applied in these life-cycles. In addition, the paper illustrates several envisioned flows involving a self-sovereign identity leveraging blockchain technology covering different aspects of an identity management system. All in all, this paper presents the first formal and comprehensive step toward an academic investigation of self-sovereign identity.
Highlights
In recent years, one of the most widely-used terms in the landscape of Identity Management is Self-Sovereign Identity
There is an optimism surrounding self-sovereign identity which has resulted in different online blogs and technical articles in recent years
The core concept of self-sovereign identity has mostly been explored from the property perspectives in textual formats
Summary
One of the most widely-used terms in the landscape of Identity Management is Self-Sovereign Identity. With the advent of blockchain technology, many believe that such technology can provide the technical foundation upon which the concept of selfsovereign identity can be realized This has fuelled the excitement where many use-cases for different scenarios are being explored to understand the suitability of such a system. Even though such exploration is essential to advance the state-ofthe-art, one inadvertent side-effect is that there exist different notions what the term self-sovereign identity means. We explore different aspects of identity management concerning self-sovereign identity and envision their corresponding use-cases utilizing blockchain technology With these contributions, this article presents the first formal and comprehensive step towards an academic exploration of self-sovereign identity.
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