Conceptually, those solutions that you’ve worked with are about account principals and access management. When you deployed a smartcard, the human identity of the person you were assigning an account principal to was established offline, ultimately linked to proof of birth and residence.
Typically your company will validate those credentials to some level for employees. At a minimum, you establish what you need to know for payroll, in other cases you do extensive background investigations. For the public, however, we’re stuck with rudimentary solutions for ID verification (bank/credit accounts, mailing letters, etc) or unreliable and invasive solutions like ID.me.
The idea of things like DID and sovereign identity is that the human has agency and can provide or not provide credentials to establish who they are. That could include a verifiable, signed representation of your birth certificate, a professional license or some other credential. Think of it as a new iteration of 90s “web of trust” concepts.
Typically your company will validate those credentials to some level for employees. At a minimum, you establish what you need to know for payroll, in other cases you do extensive background investigations. For the public, however, we’re stuck with rudimentary solutions for ID verification (bank/credit accounts, mailing letters, etc) or unreliable and invasive solutions like ID.me.
The idea of things like DID and sovereign identity is that the human has agency and can provide or not provide credentials to establish who they are. That could include a verifiable, signed representation of your birth certificate, a professional license or some other credential. Think of it as a new iteration of 90s “web of trust” concepts.