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Comment by t_mann | Hacker News Reader

There'll surely be custodial services if this takes off.

It depends on the DID method that you're using. The DID method is kind of the identity management system for Decentralized Identifiers. Many DID methods are based on blockchains and with that there are usually no recovery mechanisms for DIDs in place - if you lose your private key the identifier can't be updated and you can't prove ownership over the identifier anymore which in turn renders associated credentials (see Verifiable Credentials https://w3c.github.io/vc-data-model/) unusable.

Custodial services are a good way out. Another option with DIDs is that you can add more than one key to DID. This way you can have one key that is stored away somewhere safe and is only used for recovery purposes.

This reminds me of web service/UDDI registries, that were supposed to come, and all the WS buzz in early 2000s. Some of them came indeed only to be shut down in a few years.

That's exactly the same comparison I've been making regards the W3C VC and DID specifications - we're basically repeating the bad parts of the WS specifications.

Somebody up above mentioned the land grab smell of the DID spec.

So what's different this time? gRPC, protobuf and GraphQL are out there vs. SOAP or CORBA? Some new thing about to rev up? Just plain old loss aversion?

Lambda? We need a FrontPage or Macromedia ColdFusion for that...

I guess that's it, somebody else from the Roblox generation can pick that up.

The difference this time is that there are quite a number of blockchains who are very non-transparently attempting to become rent seekers.

There's a chance for someone to earn $x per ID card or verifiable credential issued; you're essentially becoming a TLD operator only with something 95% of the population of developed countries will use.

Okay, it is not truly decentralised then.

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