Identity Management in Internet of Things with Blockchain

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Fig. 5 Decentralized IAM

Allen [25] considers SSI to be the fourth and final stage of the identity evolution

path. Centralized, federated and user-centric identities are the past three stages that

fail to provide privacy and autonomy to the user. He attempts to define SSI using

ten principles which ought to protect the user’s control over their identity while

the system maintains the proper transparency in order to obstruct any malevolent

purpose.

These principles revolve around the rights of the user to being able to fully control,

access and transfer their identity at will, while at the same time they have the right

to consent (or not) to any kind of information sharing. The system for supporting

SSI should provide algorithm transparency and persistence for the identities in order

to be established and trusted throughout the network while the user can still claim

their right-to-be-forgotten. Currently, there are two standards being developed by

W3C to support the SSI implementation: The decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and the

verifiablecredentials(VCs)[26].Whilethefirstoneismoredata-centricregardingthe

standardization information provided by W3C, the second one consisted of abstract

concepts in order to give a fine-grained theoretical model of decentralized digital

identities and the environments they should operate in.