Alternative protocols for resolving WebIDs

[jaxoncreed]

Background:

Currently in the WebID spec (https://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/webid/spec/identity/#the-webid-http-uri) limits disco limits discovery to the http (or https) protocol. However, there are other possibilities for discovery including but not limited to:

• IPFS (https://ipfs.io/) a distributed file system that could resolve to turtle documents.

• Decentralized Identifiers - DID (https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-spec/) a collection of different identifiers with a common interface. Some supported ecosystems can be seen here (https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-method-registry/). Note the DID does include IPFS.

• Pros:

  • Can handle cases where developers do not want to depend on DNS
  • In the case of DID, would allow a flexible interface to potentially support any future identity system.

• Cons:

  • Diverges from the WebID standard
  • Resource servers would need to implement another protocol

[elf-pavlik]

I see very relevant discussionabout DIDs happening in https://github.com/solid/identity-panel/issues/1