Launch of ION – DID system by Microsoft

boris · March 27, 2021, 4:47pm

This is the launch post for Microsoft’s ION https://identity.foundation/ion/

ION is an open, public, permissionless Layer 2 Decentralized Identifier network that runs atop the Bitcoin blockchain

Decentralized Identifiers aka did is an open standard for self owned portable identity. Fission uses DIDs as the basis for its account system.

The Sidetree protocol reference implementation uses Bitcoin and IPFS.

github.com

decentralized-identity/sidetree/blob/2b5354e9d21bdc5d18a06396d96c6f2806fd356e/docs/core.md

# Sidetree Core Node.js Reference Implementation Document

This document focuses on the Node.js reference implementation of the Sidetree specification.

## Overview

![Architecture diagram](/www/diagrams/architecture.png)

## Node Types

There will exist several Sidetree node configurations, which offer a variety of modes that support different features and trade-offs. The choice to run one type or another largely depends on the type of user, machine, and intent the operator has in mind.

### Full Node

A full node offers the largest set of features and highest resolution performance of DIDs, but also requires more significant bandwidth, hardware, storage, and system resource consumption to operate. A full node will attempt to fetch and retain all data associated with the Sidetree operations present in the target system. As such, full nodes are able to quickly resolve DID lookup requests and may feature more aggressive caching of DID state than other node configurations.

### Light Node

A light node is a node that retains the ability to independently resolve DIDs without relying on a trusted party or trusted assertions by other nodes, while minimizing the amount of bandwidth and data required to do so. Light nodes fetch and maintain only the minimum Sidetree data required to create an independent DID-indexed lookup table that enables just-in-time resolution of DIDs.

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There are a couple of other links in the post worth investigating.

Open ID Connect Self Issued

https://bitbucket.org/openid/connect/src/master/openid-connect-self-issued-v2-1_0.md

If I’m reading this correctly, this is a way to use your own keys / DID to be able to connect in an OpenID scenario.

.well-known and DIDs

https://identity.foundation/.well-known/resources/did-configuration/

I experimented with this with Rosano and remoteStorage, this is a similar pattern.

https://example.com/.well-known/did-configuration.json this would be the location of a file.

As we move to exposing usernames as USERNAME.fission.name we can also potentially auto publish people’s DIDs at this well known location.