Centralization and trust in digital identity

BLOCKCHAIN IS THE BACKBONE OF DECENTRALIZED IDENTITY 63% of Decentralized Identity Projects use Blockchain. While a significant majority of decentralized identity (DID) projects leverage blockchain as their trust anchor—offering transparency, immutability, and decentralization—some projects choose alternative paths. For instance, Transmute uses DID:web, resolving public keys via traditional Web2 endpoints instead of decentralized ledgers. This divergence highlights an essential debate: should decentralized identity rely on Web2 infrastructure, with its known security limitations and centralized control, or embrace the cryptographic assurances and distributed consensus that blockchains offer? As the ecosystem matures, the foundational question remains: what kind of trust do we want to build our digital identity future upon—server-based or protocol-based? The growing dominance of blockchain in DID projects suggests that the market is leaning toward trustless, tamper-resistant architectures to support the next generation of identity frameworks. #DigitalIdentity #Blockchain #SSI #VerifiableCredentials #DID #Web3 #IdentityRevolution Source: weboftrust.org

Your Digital Identity - What If Somebody Else Own's It? In today’s digital world, individuals have lost control of their personal data. Our identities—once built on physical records and face-to-face relationships—are now scattered across platforms owned by Big Tech. These companies track, store, and monetize our digital footprints, often without our explicit consent. This has created a system where people are treated as a single, oversimplified identity, despite living multifaceted lives across personal, professional, and social contexts. The result is a growing disconnect between users and the platforms they rely on, eroding trust and limiting true ownership of one’s digital life. In this episode of ATP, we spoke to Glenn Gore, CEO of Affinidi, who challenges this status quo and argues that ownership of our digital identity should belong to us—not BIG Tech. He explains how our personal stories, once shared as data, become valuable assets that we no longer control, and how this loss affects everything from trust to opportunity in a connected world. Glenn outlines a future where we can reclaim our identities using decentralized technologies. With tools like personal data vaults, decentralized identifiers (DIDs), and verifiable credentials, individuals can own, manage, and selectively share their data without giving it away. This new paradigm not only restores privacy and control but also enables more meaningful, trust-based interactions between users and brands. In a digital world driven by AI and data, Glenn believes it’s essential that we shift from being passive participants to active owners of our digital lives. #technology #innovation #digitalidentity #dataprivacy #verifiablecredentials Martin Ronfort Renata Quintieri Rachael Laporce Renovah 瑞秋

China’s rollout of a national blockchain-based digital ID system—#RealDID—marks a turning point in how digital identity, trust, and control are governed. By binding every citizen’s online activity to a centralized, state-issued ID, #China is creating a powerful trust layer that also consolidates risk. A breach or spoof of this system would enable deep impersonation, systemic disruption, and a new kind of nation-scale cyber threat. The infrastructure is also exportable—raising the stakes as RealDID and China’s BSN network quietly embed into partner nations’ digital backbones. Verified behavioral data flowing into AI models, the elimination of anonymity, and the rise of state-controlled digital identity pose long-term risks to resilience, innovation, and global digital sovereignty. As identity becomes infrastructure, cyber leaders need to be asking: who owns it, who governs it, and what happens when it breaks #DigitalSovereignty #IdentityInfrastructure https://lnkd.in/gMi5DHHM