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w3c / did-use-cases

Decentralized Identifier Use Cases and Requirements v1.0
https://w3c.github.io/did-use-cases/
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Decentralized Identities are simply Credentials and should be defined/called out as such... #56

Closed mwherman2000 closed 4 years ago

mwherman2000 commented 5 years ago

A Decentralized Identity is simply a Credential and should be defined/called out as such. That is, a Decentralized Identity is simply a (Verifiable) Credential associated with a Subject by a Decentralized Identifier. ...a Credential being a collection of Claims (name-value pairs) associated, again, with the Subject by a Decentralized Identifier.

This clarification is important because it leads to a natural partitioning of the actions one performs against a Decentralized Identity in comparison to those actions that are generic to a Credential (e.g. creation) and those that are specific to a Decentralized Identity.

TallTed commented 4 years ago

It does not make sense to me to consider any kind of "identity" to be a credential, either verifiable or not.

You say yourself --

a Decentralized Identity is simply a (Verifiable) Credential associated with a Subject by a Decentralized Identifier

Every element of that sentence is important.

In other words, a Decentralized Identity is not only a (Verifiable) Credential -- it is a combination of (at least) three things, including a (Verifiable) Credential, a Subject, and a Decentralized Identifier.

My identity may be supported, represented, and/or substantiated by various credentials -- passport, driver's license, birth certificate, etc. -- but none of these are my identity.

The "natural partitioning" you are trying to reveal seems rather to be further obscured by the blurring here.

Perhaps it might clarify things if we were to discuss a concrete hypothetical example -- maybe a club membership? -- rather than speaking only of generics.

mwherman2000 commented 4 years ago

Read https://github.com/w3c/did-use-cases/issues/57#issuecomment-559989122 first.

TallTed commented 4 years ago

@mwherman2000 - I have read that. It doesn't change anything I've said.

mwherman2000 commented 4 years ago

@TallTed I'm curious about any alternatives you have to suggest for the "DID" wording confusion/issues in the use case document?

This has been an ongoing problem for literally "years" now and the problem still remains ...a situation that I don't believe is acceptable in specification documents.

jandrieu commented 4 years ago

Not applicable. Closing.

DIDs are identifiers, which may be used as part of an identity system. We do not treat "Decentralized Identities" as credentials.