A few weeks ago I learned of the Sovrin Foundation a foundation interested in establish a concept to support the idea of a self Sovereign means of identity.
As an advocate for stronger forms of identification and more important Authentication I am pleased to have received your response today.
Back in 1993 I was part of Europay and drove the creation of the EMV specifications as a form of Authentication and frankly reflecting back a strong form of Identification with the Trust Anchor being the Financial institution issuing the card and the foundation anchor being the payment network that the issuer used to assure acceptance globally.
In 2013 I joined the Board of the FIDO Alliance and eventually become the Secretary of that Board.
Today I am engaged with a company called IPSIDY, that is promoting and selling Identity as a solution.
Clear the conversations we are having include:
- Device based versus centralized biometric authentication
- Identification based on a central repository of Biometrics or a simply identifier linked to a means of authentication
- Claims and assertions one points (URL) to or those that one has in their own possession
- Repositories or Distributed databases of information
- Privacy of attributes and rights to defining what can be shared
When I ask about the future of Sovrin, I hear people saying great concept how does it scale to be useful.
This, as was my experience in the Payments world, is the challenge of a two sided market
- Consumer – Merchant
- Individual – Rely Party and those seeking attributes and proofs of identity
The challenge is developing a value proposition and more importantly critical mass that will excite both sides of the market to want to participate.
To further complicate developing the market is the challenge of the “Go To Market” strategy. Who does one partner with given that the usefulness to the citizen/consumer is predicated on the number of parties or places this solution, token or Identity with a set of sharable attributes can be usefully used.
This is the question this is the challenge.