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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

The weekend before #RWOT9 in Prague, another 5 advance reading topic papers on decentralized identity to review.

8/30/2019, 1:29:07 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"“trust” encompasses a range of contexts. Trusting that a key belongs to an entity, evaluating an identity, is different from trusting that entity to sign others’ keys accurately, which is different from trusting it to share objective news online or to babysit your kids."

8/30/2019, 1:36:13 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"The traditional credit market is limited by the cost of capital and the cost of underwriting…To reduce the cost of underwriting, we envision a WoT that represents credit relationships and functions as a decentralized underwriting platform, operating on top of a blockchain"

8/30/2019, 1:37:22 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"A WoC (Web-of-Credit) is represented as a typical WoT, a weighted directed graph (V, E, w), where V and E represent the set of nodes and the set of edges, respectively, and w is a weight function on edges…"

8/30/2019, 1:39:18 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"…An edge e=(u,v) ∈ E and its weight w(e) represent the amount of credit u extends to v, and are considered valid only if they are signed by u’s public key."

8/30/2019, 1:40:05 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"Deciding on how to calculate credit between indirectly connected nodes in a web of credit is crucial in leveraging the graph’s connectivity to defend against Sybil nodes. There is a large literature on crawling social graphs for peer-to-peer Sybil defense"

8/30/2019, 1:40:16 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"WoCs can organically affect and be affected by smart contracts’ logic, yielding “rich” WoCs…a smart contract’s behavior can be conditioned on given users’ contexts; e.g., Alice lets a smart contract govern her lendable funds according to her local view of the WoC."

8/30/2019, 1:41:04 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"we can easily imagine how credit can flow from a Korean businesswoman to a young student who has joined an Income Share program to cover his studies; or from a Russian financier to a Filipino worker who needs a stream of …loans to bridge the gap between his daily expenses"

8/30/2019, 1:42:33 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…The paper continues with some questions and tradeoffs: passivity vs privacy, inter-hub loans, and more. When I read the end of this paper I think of the Lightning Network but as credit combined with reputation. I look forward to see how this topic advances.

8/30/2019, 1:46:25 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"Nodemail, then, is a system which seeks to create a robust and secure framework that relesases us from our dependence on ossified addresses, and enables us to conceive of communication from the standpoint of networks built on fresh, unique, consensual connections."

8/30/2019, 1:50:39 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"each participant generates a unique hierarchical node for each connection…through which they make ongoing structures of communication, shifting the locus from static, publicly available identities/addresses to unique addresses/identities born through connection with others."

8/30/2019, 1:52:10 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"users…grant & revoke the access others have to communication with them through management of the address which corresponds with each connection…individuals are granted greater control over the correlations others may make about their social networks."

8/30/2019, 1:53:25 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…the author would "like to develop a working prototype that provides much of this functionality and am seeking to define the MVP that leverages an existing open source…which would enable individuals to build their own nodemail servers"

8/30/2019, 1:54:59 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…I'd be intrigued if this can be integrated into some of the DID BTCR method work happing at #RWOT9, with the additional benefit that financial bonds can be set at risk in cases of spamming.

8/30/2019, 1:56:15 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"We leverage WoT concept…to create a network of competencies where Experts…act as verifiers to assess user's competency on a given subject. We propose using decentralized staking & slashing mechanism…in order to create financial incentives for users to minimize fraud"

8/30/2019, 2:00:07 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"With…open platforms…billions of people are getting access to free or almost free educational content. As this trend continues, more and more people around the world will be able to acquire same level of education as students from top universities."

8/30/2019, 2:01:19 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"Current model of educational credentials issuing is not ideal due to the fact that it only captures the fact of completion of some formal educational program…On the other hand, employers are more interested in applied skills rather than abstract learning"

8/30/2019, 2:02:14 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"In order to preserve properties of decentralization and self-sovereign identity all data in anonymized and public:
Anonymity property ensures no user identifying information can be leaked without explicit permission for user. "

8/30/2019, 2:03:53 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"Publicity property ensures track record of any interaction between Student and Expert on the platform, thus gives a proof of competency verification process."

8/30/2019, 2:04:07 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"several possible attacks…Verifiers are not diligent enough in their work…Collusion between Verifier and Student…Watchers not being active in the network. In order to mitigate these threats we propose creating an incentive-based mechanism"

8/30/2019, 2:05:02 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"Model…still relies on centralized model of competencies & rubrics. Ideal network should also feature some sort of DAO-based instruments for community to come up with relevant and up-to-date map of skills and rubrics describing grading criteria &…levels for each competency."

8/30/2019, 2:05:52 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…This is another topic that I'd like to see the BTCR team begin to tackle. Pseudo-anonymous competency is a key requirement in the Amira User Story that is a key guide for the BTCR roadmap.

8/30/2019, 2:08:27 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"In order to obtain the government grant, every student is required to prove the following:…(non-exhaustive list)…and send them (digitally or analogue) to a local administration. This is not only cumbersome, but also leaves room for errors and fraud."

8/30/2019, 2:10:41 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"As noted in the blockchain position paper from June 2019 Germany aims to build an alternative to the existing identity options based on a government-owned blockchain infrastructure."

8/30/2019, 2:11:21 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…Using Verifiable Credentials for educational claims is one easiest use cases for governments to begin to test the self-sovereign identity architecture. I'm glad to see more work advancing in this area.

8/30/2019, 2:13:23 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"decentralized software tends to suffer from limited capability as vendors ship…(MVPs) in the battle to establish a defendable role for themselves in the ecosystem. To date no credential wallet offers a seamless, interoperable experience across all digital asset classes."

8/30/2019, 2:17:40 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"Eventually, digital wallets will settle into a handful of common approaches. As the industry matures, patterns of capability and architecture will emerge, solving real problems in understandable ways."

8/30/2019, 2:18:18 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"Darrell O’Donnell…defines wallets as “where we put stuff”…After that colloquial definition, he clarifies that what he means by digital wallet is not “digital wallet storage”. We agree. It’s not where you store stuff, it’s where you control it."

8/30/2019, 2:19:35 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"wallets for credentials have historically managed keys…to meet the requirements of issuers and relying parties…subject typically is uninvolved with key management. In contrast, decentralized approaches take a lesson from cryptocurrencies, using keys created…by the end user"

8/30/2019, 2:21:32 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"This innovation, and the emerging standards based on it, democratized credential management, allowing anyone to verifiably say anything about anyone else without censure or permission. Unfortunately, it also created two new problems."

8/30/2019, 2:22:12 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"The first is that individuals lack the sophisticated IT departments needed to build, operate, and maintain robust key management systems and processes…The second is that the issuers themselves are no longer vetted by a hierarchy of trusted authorities."

8/30/2019, 2:22:46 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"From this initial analysis, we can already identify components that are vital, but are not yet accurately depicted. For example, in the identity component diagram above, we have “Agents” floating untethered."

8/30/2019, 2:24:49 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"It is worth noting that because wallets are control mechanisms, it matters just as much how individuals control the functionality as how the wallets implement those controls. "

8/30/2019, 2:25:28 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"Many approaches today focus on either key technical features…or on particular components perceived as the “missing link”…What few have done is to illustrate in clear and unambiguous terms exactly how the proposed system will be used by individuals across their lifecycle"

8/30/2019, 2:26:05 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"We believe that only by deeply understanding the human requirements-—independent of the technology choices necessary to operationalize it—can we have some sense of a complete and universal solution."

8/30/2019, 2:26:33 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"One next step in the realization of a truly universal digital wallet is establishing a shared language among those developers, regulators, decision-makers, and end-users co-inventing the emergent decentralized identity layer for digital society."

8/30/2019, 2:27:03 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

…"The terms we’ve introduced above—even just with minimalistic boxes and arrows—provide a…framework for distilling a common vocabulary for how different approaches from different schools of thought, which in turn should help us define a common architecture for digital wallets"

8/30/2019, 2:27:39 PM

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Christopher Allen

@ChristopherA

That's my 5 for today (though I cheated a little, the last paper was co-authored by myself). About 15 remain to share before #RWOT9 begins on Tuesday in Prague.

8/30/2019, 2:28:48 PM

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