# Identity

(trace online accounts across various kinds of contiunity)

## Use Cases/Motivations

Why do we care about identity anyway?

 - ability to control access to private data and over an account (ie need to identify myself, this is me, this is my account)
 - ability to communicate with a person across platforms, ie 'send this message to X on whatever platform he is on' (ie need to find another person by their identity as a person)
 - ability to track reputation and credibility of a user across platforms 
 - ability to identify things other than humans, ie accounts, corporations, organizations, documents

## Decentralized identity

 - [DIDs or Decentralized Identifiers are a W3C standard](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/)
   Simple example: `did:example:123456789abcdefghi`
                    ^^ scheme identifier
                        ^^ did method
                                ^^ method-specific identifier


## Pseudonymity

  - reputation requires a long term handle of some sort

## Key management

## Key verification

## Key backup

## Reputation, Trust

## Social graph proof
  - Handshake problem and collusion protection (see IRIS)

## Account recovery

## Privacy

## Links

[What are Decentralized Identifiers](https://www.evernym.com/blog/what-are-decentralized-identifiers-dids/)