> Identity (in any meaningful sense) must always delegate trust to some kind of issuing authority. If for no other reason than because any humane system must always accommodate users who forget their passwords, lose their private keys, etc.

Web of trust protocols are a decades-long solved problem (albeit without a prevailing deployment yet). It seems like your comment is meant to be quietly denigrating toward them (or do I have that wrong?). May I ask why?

It seems like eventually a web of trust model is going to arise and win over a critical mass.