WebID: a standard for identifying individuals, groups and other entities

[happybeing]

A topic for discussing of WebID, not limited to its use on SAFE. What is a WebID? From the Solid Spec:

Identity

Solid uses WebID URIs as universal usernames or actor identifiers. Frequently referred to simply as
WebIDs, these URIs form the basis of most other Solid-related technologies, such as authentication, authorization, access control, user profiles, discovery of user preferences and server capabilities, and more.

WebIDs provide globally unique decentralized identifiers, enable cross-service federated signin, prevent service provider lock-in, and give users control over their own identity. The WebID URI’s primary function is to point to the location of a public WebID Profile document (see below).

Example WebIDs: https://alice.databox.com/profile/card#me or http://somepersonalsite.com/#webid

The above is copied from the Solid Specification (v0.7.0)

Reference

• WebID 1.0 (W3C)

Forums

• Solid chat (Gitter)
• WebID Community Group (a continuation of the WebID Incubator)

Misc

• A useful exploration of identity, and the role of chains and graphs in understanding the capabilities and limitations of trust when using blockchain and WebID, by Henry Story (@bblfish) Identity on the Web and the Blockchain. | by Henry Story | Cyber Security Southampton | Medium

Related

• Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) (W3C Draft)

Feel free to edit this post to add useful references, articles etc.

[rob]

Sounds interesting there Mark.

Just wondering, as one does when the term “identifying individuals”, if there is any down side when people want “throw-away” IDs or Anonymous IDs used across a few services.

Is there any major issues with having 2 or 5 or 50 or 1000 IDs (over time) to facilitate IDs for different purposes.

[happybeing]

@rob

Is there any major issues with having 2 or 5 or 50 or 1000 IDs (over time) to facilitate IDs for different purposes.

This is fine, in fact better on SAFE because they are easier to create and keep anonymous, and can still be memorable.

On Solid you can do this too, but since you either have to get an account on a Web based service which ties you to a domain, or set up your own service on a domain its harder to manage many anonymous, throwaway ids without them being tracked or deanonymised.

DID doesn’t have that this problem because although you use a service, the DID itself is decentralised so easier to keep anonymous. However, DID doesn’t solve the problem of creating memorable ids.

SAFE is the only system that can deliver all the sides of Zooko’s triangle:

https://twitter.com/safepress/status/1022926272761147392