14I/ The Everything Graph: Building Anything from Identity Primitives

The Everything Graph: Building Anything from Identity Primitives

Session Convener: Daniel McGrogan

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Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:

Identify and break down the various identity and relationship primitives which exist, from which we can think about the entire space. The two basic abstractions identified are

• “identities” which are universally unique monikers, the control of which is expressed by control of a private key.
• “relationships” non-repudiable statements made by one identity (issuer) about another (subject)

We can abstract many different relationship models with this. Verifiable credentials which are issued by a DID about a DID can be represented as well as a Bitcoin transaction where one identity (address) makes a transaction to another identity (address), IDPs issues a Identity token about a subject.

Once we have an appropriate abstraction which can be applied to such a wide array of systems we recognise that there is a universal identity graph where the nodes are identities and edges are relationships. Note the graph is not necessarily a completely connected graph but may have clusters. One cluster may be the Bitcoin network, another the Ethereum network, another a collection Decentralized Web Nodes which have credentials referencing each other.

The graph itself is most lily too big to represent but is consistent enough to rationalize about and subsets of the graph may be codified for specific use cases.

What can we do with the graph

• Western Super Apps: there is a noticeable absence of super apps in the west. This may be in part due to the lack of strong identity which can be leveraged by the “applets” on the super app. SSI provides a mechanism for federated identity across the subject entity vs a centralized IDP. This provides an opportunity for a platform to bring together applications and users.
• DAOs & DAPs: Use of governance frameworks to describe process across identities can enable the DAPs which describe actions across different sub graphs e.g. a ethereum smart contract issues a VC to a DID subject holder who can then use it to share with a verifier at the door to a concert.
• The Metavers: if one considers the ability to tokenise any entirety physical abstract identity and we can represent any relationship between identity then we can create a meta layer of information on reality. This meta identity layer can provide endless possibilities of interaction, not just with other people in virtual meeting rooms but with anything in the physical world.

Constructive feedback: we are lacking the terminology or clarification required to discuss concepts in the abstract and implementations.