Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI)

Self-sovereign identity describes an approach where the individual, rather than a platform, holds their identity. Credentials issued by trusted parties live in the user’s wallet, and the user presents verifiable proofs to whoever needs them. The technical foundations are decentralized identifiers for controllable identifiers and verifiable credentials for the signed claims.

The aim is to reduce reliance on any single identity provider, give users control over what they disclose, and enable reuse so a person verifies once and presents the result many times. Selective disclosure lets them share a single attribute without revealing the whole credential.

For CIAM, self-sovereign identity is a direction rather than today’s default. Government programs such as the European Digital Identity Wallet under eIDAS 2.0 are the largest push toward it, and customer-facing services will increasingly be able to accept these user-held credentials.

Sources

• W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model: https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/