Author: Snorre Lothar von Gohren Edwin
Diwala want to contribute to enable the current "offliners" to take back control of their digital selves. This paper goes through some problem areas of the current emerging markets and their ability to run the existing decentralize identity solutions, based on their device penetration.
We want to provide, during RWoT, a couple of clear architectures, from a collection of experts, how to get started to deliver a bare minimum decentralized identity solution. May that be, on a smartphone, SMS, smart cards, or even KaiOS
Working with devices in the African continent for about a year now, we time after time experience app and device problems with the current existing identity solutions we work with. Also we experience that the current device penetration today, in Uganda particularly, is not 100%, meaning that it is difficult to provide value for everybody with only a smartphone solution.
First we want to discuss what the bare minimum specifications an identity app needs to provide value? How can an identity be represented physically? What are the pros and cons of a combination of these situations.
The second issue is to discuss how to enable an ecosystem, what is needed to get other startups with their own non did solutions in play. Is it SDKs, libraries, proxys, some kind of shared infrastructure?
In short, what does a bare minimum identity architecture look like for the different infrastuctures available?
These are questions we want to raise and discuss in this paper, from a collection of experts, for anyone wanting to charge into this space.
Phones are getting faster. I don’t think anyone will disagree with that. Stronger GPUs, faster and more CPUs, more RAM. Phones are going through the same rapid development desktop machines did in the early 2000s.
However, that’s just one edge of the distribution. Slow phones are stuck in 2014. The process to create the chips from half a decade ago has gotten so cheap that phones can now be sold for around $20, and cheaper phone will reach a wider audience. ~50% of the world are online, meaning that the other ~50% are not. However, these offliners are coming online and are predominantly located in emerging markets such as many of the African countries, where people simply can’t afford any of the Wealthy Western Web flagship phones. Or even phones based on firefox OS is emerging and taking over markets: KaiOS
We want to discuss how to tackle this properly and how to enable them to represent themselves online with a proper ID and DID.
As mentioned above, there are still a lot of people who are offline, and they are slowly getting online. But to save them some time from having to understand what this digital identity thing is and get a feel of how to properly represent yourself online. We want to understand what can be done for the no devicers/offliners now.
Last year, ID pass presented a really cool solution, and I want to continue that talk. ID pass solution can work well and is perfect for closed ecosystems like a refugee camp, but will have a problem of working well in an open ecosystem like the city of Kampala. Because how do you enable people to share credentials and their DID properly. Solutions with cards and phones are not far away according to this tweet. But it again depends on a pretty new devices.
We feel this area needs more discussion. What are the needs for such a physical identity? How can easy device to card communication be enabled? What are the best way for an interaction to happen in an open ecosystem? That be receiving and sharing a VC, backing up a VC and so on.
In an area that has leapfrogged in certain digital areas, but are still living with a thight connection to the physical world, the core digitalization has not yet started. It is very fragmented and is not a very good hotbed for a digital ecosystem. That is where decentralized identity can come in.
But, with a fragmented digitilization it is hard to understand where to start. Its even more difficult to start where there is still a need for a bridge between physical and digital. These are areas we want to discuss and be able to declear some pointers and steps to move forward with, to be able to kick start the ecosystem of self sovreign identities in a digital space.
With this paper we want to create the dicsussions on how to approach a market that is in a clear need of a good digital infrastructure, that has not taken all the steps compared to the west. With a clear divergence of device penetration, and types of devices that are in the market. Is it possible to put up a strategy for a bare minimum decentralized identity solution? That will enable these people to take control of their digital selves and set a base layer for a proper digital infrastructure. Can we come up with some guidelines for the ecosystem, a couple of bare minimum example architectures, or even an solution to showcase to the community how one can get started?