Why self-sovereign identity, holistic identity, and data economy matter
Tags: ssi, web5, dataeconomy, web3
Published: 2023-07-18 07:45:08

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I want to tell you my story and avoid 100500 talks about how the internet is broken. Let's discover my path and my WHY.

I am Ukrainian. We are the most freedom-oriented nation that survived a few totalitarian regimes and fought all the time for fundamental untakable human rights.

I am 20 years of experience in software engineering and have always been looking for an ethical and human-oriented business. E-commerce and advertisement are not always ethical and user-centric. It could just force people to buy more. For me, it was a compromise with myself.

I am not new in the identity business I built a few big identity systems in 2010 for a US market on top of WIF (Microsoft identity framework).

But the first aha moment and entitlement happened with me around 2015. I was a part of the Traffic analytics department of TomTom. TomTom is a defacto navigation system that even creates a verb — to tomtom, similar to google.

Every day you commute, you generate billions of traces and data points that fuel a billion-dollar business and create value for TomTom. In the case of Tomtom, it was not so bad that you get something back like better routes, traffic insides, faster way to find parking slots, etc. TomTom is ethical, anonymizes data, and cares about data security or at least forced to do so for you. Your traffic data do not belong to you; all millions of dollars or euros do not go into your pocket.

I was born in the Soviet Union, and I am a Capitalist in a DNA and could write a book about the free market and the need for democracy and a free market — don't get me wrong. I believe in a co-created ecosystem that works side by side — users together with organizations and businesses. The primary fuel for this ecosystem is data. Data is new oil and gold.

Most of the population is unaware of the data economy and owns data and content that we permanently co-create but do not own.

So in terms of data on the modern internet, we all live in some kind of Soviet Union where citizens create a value but have no concept of private property.

It was eating my brain for a long time till 2020 without an answer. It was a COVID crisis, and a few startups failed. I was practically unemployed. I was lucky and met folk from Affinidi.

Well, the first impression was quite strange. I had a feeling that I was talking with some kind of church)) Everybody was talking about an Identity, free data, and a new domain that would change the world!!

Affinidi was building an SDK and building blocks for a Self-sovereign identity. A real decision changer for me was the case of GoodWorker. So it was a company and product that built a system on top of Affinidi SDK that changed millions of lives of blue-collar seasonal workers in India for the better.

Seasonal workers migrate from villages to big cities and work in different factories etc. but somehow do not have a confirmation of employment history and verification of skills. As a result — no proof of stable income and the possibility of finding a better job or taking a loan. It is a closed loop full of fraud and sadness.

GoodWorker helps create a new identity and build the worker's identity with verified skills, employment, and income. It also partners with platforms that help develop new skills and find a way to a better life.

Affinidi has a powerful engineering culture and extraordinary people. So I was hooked.

I finally found an answer to my question of how to give data back to users and create a user-centric landscape.

I am still on this journey. I focused my Youtube and Meduim on SSI and identity systems and constantly shared my findings.

You can find my channel.

I made a little book in the form of Jupyter notebooks about Affinidi SDK and core concepts for free.

![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1000/1*ogMyhiJ03-rktu1G_6Hr7g.png)

The ultimate goal is to make data work for you and bring you:

-   New data inside for a better life and decisions
-   make money from it
-   improve a community and world around

We must build an interconnected ecosystem and addressable space for data agents to make it happen.

I see a few prerequisites for It.

-   **Holistic Identity** — give an instrument that allows you to name yourself and identify. Naming + addressing
-   **Data Unlocking** — to share data and get inside, we need to structure data and make them interoperable and portable.

You could read more about data unlocking.

The next level is more complex how to create **Trust** but keep **privacy** as the first principle.

On privacy, I see two cornerstones

-   Privacy by design

-   Laws of Identity

I am convinced that we are lacking new types of identity systems that should be built on top of these principles and give a user ability to create fluid multi-pseudonymity relations and get the possibility to be authorized without traceability. You can read more here.

On the topic of trust, it is still a huge area that requires research and investment. I recommend reading

At a point when we manage to give instruments that create trust and data exchange trust protocols — the data economy will get a new spinoff.

I worked for a long time on SSI SDK but quickly discovered it was insufficient. It is a building block, but we must do much more and build an ecosystem.

SSI is a relatively new domain that struggles for mass adoption and a basic understanding of engineers and regular users.

We on the beginning of the adoption curve. A lot of standards is still on developing or even spec and concept face without a straightforward implementation. So it is not even a place to google a solution

![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*uMljy8Z_CHZnbrCtkYFsmQ.jpeg)

© [https://www.cblohm.com/blog/education-marketing-trends/adoption-curve-education-marketing-strategy/](https://www.cblohm.com/blog/education-marketing-trends/adoption-curve-education-marketing-strategy/)

if you follow my articles, I shoved how SSI principles correlate and support laws of identity and privacy by design principles. As same SSI makes data unlock and portability happens.

I believe that the future of identity and reputation systems is data and attribution identification and authorization. We will shift from cryptography and key ownership proof to a data and data behavior user profile where data will be the main authorization driver.

You are your data points, not your private key. Your public identity in SSI is a combination of DIDs and a VP that shares data publically.

> Identity = DIDs + VPs

It will form an identity & data loop where data will be a fuel