Interoperability and Portability in Blockchain-Based Self-Sovereign Identities

BA, MA

State: Open

Published: 2023-12-18

Description:

Interoperability and portability definitions within Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) applications often appear to be misleading, contributing to a lack of consensus within the SSI developers community. Each author tends to interpret these terms in their unique manner and suitable for specific use cases, further complicating the understanding and slowing a unified understanding of the SSI. This lack of consensus poses a significant obstacle to the widespread adoption of SSI, as the absence of standardised interpretations obstructs effective communication and collaboration among stakeholders. A central problem that complicates this is the prevailing absence of interoperability among diverse components and existing solutions within the SSI landscape. This deficiency slows the seamless integration of SSI applications, holding back progress and delaying the realisation of the full potential of self-sovereign identity systems [1].

Problem:

Current SSI platforms do not seem interoperable nor portable. Thus, do not meet two main requirements of self-sovereign identity outlined by Allen [2].
There’s a need for clearer definition of what it means for an identity to be interoperable and portable, and detailed analysis of existing solutions.

Goals:

Study the notions of interoperability and portability in the context of SSI.
Explore the notion of cross-chain digital identity.
Outline the definitions of the interoperability and portability.
Design and implement the mechanism of how interoperability and portability features can be tested in a platform (refining the definitions further and mapping them to technical features that makes a system meet those features).
Investigate and evaluate how current popular SSI platform (e.g., Sovrin, uPort) meet the requirements of interoperability and portability, answering two questions:

References:

G. Laatikainen, T. Kolehmainen and P. Abrahamsso, “Self-Sovereign Identity Ecosystems: Benefits and Challenges”, Proceedings of the 12th Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems, 2021. Available: https://aisel.aisnet.org/scis2021/10/.
C. Allen, “The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity”, 2016. Available: https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/the-path-to-self-soverereign-identity/.
C. Allen, “Self-Sovereign Identity: 5 Years On The Initial Design, Development, and Deployment of SSI”, 2021. Available: https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/SSI-5-Years-On/.
S. Cucko, S. Becirovic, A. Kamisalic, S. Mrdovic and M. Turkanovic, “Towards the Classification of Self-Sovereign Identity Properties”, IEEE Access, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2112.04155.
A. Grüner, A. Mühle and C. Meinel, “Analysing Interoperability and Portability Concepts for Self-Sovereign Identity”, IEEE 20th International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom), 2021. DOI: 10.1109/TRUSTCOM53373.2021.00089.
H. Yildiz, A. Kupper, D. Thatmann, S. Gondor and P. Herbke, “A Tutorial on the Interoperability of Self-sovereign Identities”, arXiv, 2022. DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.04692.

20% related work, 20% design, 20% implementation, 15% answering question 1, 15% answering question 2, 10% critical evaluation

Supervisors: Daria Schumm