self sovereign identity

on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. self-sovereign identity can allow this dog to participate in the secure commerce and activity of the internet without ever needing to establish its humanity.

trusted third parties are the most common mode of identity verification. email is a common mode of verification, with the email verification loop establishing ones control over an email address. this implicitly trusts the email provider, which is the third party in this example. direct verification from other parties, for example facebook, twitter, etc are also common. this approach has the advantage of being relatively easy to implement and so long as the third parties are incentivized to be trustworthy, it is also relatively secure.