Cardano lets you own your identity

[HeptaSean]

@Pete_Vielhaber

Indeed, the Atala PRISM DID method is not published. Public registration is only required when Mainnet switches on - which is coming soon.

This could be considered a bit late. Other projects on other chains also publish their work in progress, there. In fact, there are some (IMO quite embarrassing) threads on here asking for technical details of Prism for years:

Atala PRISM - Is SDK or more info available? What is the timeline for release?

I have a dApp idea that I’d like to integrate it with & need to form Business Model/Value Proposition for a proposal to a local accelerator and eventually Catalyst. I basically need scope for the tech… so capabilities/limitations, SDK. Does anyone know if Prism is simply waiting for smart contracts to be functional post-Alonzo? Thx

Is Atala Prism Open Source? If not, will it ever be?

Was talking to some friends who were versed in the privacy and security space, and introduced them to Atala Prism. The immediate red flags they brought up was the lack of open source information and concentrated data storage. So i was wondering if there’s more information on this that could be shared that i don’t already know. First, is Atala Prism Open Source? Second, would someone be capable of creating multiple accounts so to speak, or separating their data so as to avoid Meta-Data leaks?

@Pete_Vielhaber

What is the benefit? Really?

Privacy, security, data portability, convenience, time and cost saving, and agency are just a few.

Sorry, those are just buzzwords, but also that was a bit of a hidden back-reference to:

Can Cardano improve social networks?

In the intoduction, you say that the problem is centralisation, but in the rest of the article the topic is only logging in and signing messages on still centralised services. There already were attempts to decentralise social networks – Mastodon probably being the most successful, but by far not the only one. They did not need any blockchain at all for it. Nevertheless, they did not replace any of the existing networks. I’d say for social, more than for technological reasons: People just want …

I really do not see any advantage that a blockchain-based or specifically Atala-Prism-based solution would have over, e.g., simply using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509.

@Pete_Vielhaber

However, as a verifier, I would only accept trusted or verifiable issuers of VCs.

How do you know if an issuer is “trusted and verifiable”? This information has to either be provided by some means off-chain (raising the question if I still need the chain when this off-chain infrastructure is needed anyway – and, in fact, is the only means by which trust is generated, the recording on the chain is basically worthless here) or you somehow have to gatekeep that only “trusted and verifiable” issuers’ DIDs go onto the chain (raising the question if the chain’s verification in this regard is sufficient and also obviously making it quite centralised).

@Pete_Vielhaber

Interestingly enough, Atala PRISM DIDs don’t have to be on-chain. Only the DIDs that issue credentials have to be on-chain.

So, you are using a technique akin to https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-method-key/? Where the DID document can be generated from the DID itself without the need of it being provided somewhere? But why do issuer’s DIDs then have to be on-chain? What information is conveyed by it being on-chain? Other than that someone has put it on the chain?

@Pete_Vielhaber

The only centralized portions that I can spot are in governance frameworks and the trust registries they create.

So, the specifications will be published and then I will be able to create my own DID, also DIDs for issuing credentials, create VCs, … and all that without any help from IOHK or a central service of Atala Prism and then Lace will accept all that in exactly the same way as it is accepted if I use your tools? Yes, then it is decentralised.

@Pete_Vielhaber

Having a universal resolver (being able to resolve other DID methods) is a high priority.

But that would also be needed. Getting the whole world to use the Cardano SSI solution in preference to any of the Ethereum or other chain solutions would be phantasmal. For interoperability, it would of course also be needed that the Prism method is also present in the resolvers they use.