Decentralized Identity: Keynote Panel at Hyperledger Global Forum

At the Hyperledger Foundation conference last year in Dublin, I participated in a keynote panel discussion regarding decentralized identity, the level of adoption among companies and customers, and the factors that will ultimately lead to ecosystem acceptance.

We had myself Heather Dahl from Indicio, Marie Wallace who was at IBM at the time (now she is at Accenture), Drummond Reed from Avast (now GenDigital).

Here is the video and the summary.

The Main Points from the Panel

The keynote discussion focused mostly on the concept of decentralized identity, namely where we are and where we are headed.

Based on the keynote discussion, the following topics were discussed:

1. Role of Government in Promoting Innovation: The panelists discussed how the government can be an engine for helping private enterprises drive innovation. They highlighted examples of Canada, British Columbia (BC), and the government of Aruba using decentralized identity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Decentralized Identity Solutions: The discussion included the adoption and development of decentralized identity solutions in various regions of the world, particularly in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Europe. The panelists also discussed the trusted digital ecosystem developed during the COVID pandemic and how it was designed to scale for other use cases.
3. Building and Deploying Technological Solutions: The panelists emphasized the importance of building and deploying technology solutions. They discussed the challenges in working with different stakeholders, including governments, agencies, and private sector entities like hotels, nightclubs, or casinos.
4. Organization-Wide Deployment: There was a discussion about how successfully deploying a technology solution affects all parts of an organization, including marketing, communications, legal, HR, and the C-suite.
5. Digital Green Cards and Verifiable Credential Standards: The U.S. Immigration Services’ announcement of issuing digital green cards using verifiable credential standards was discussed.
6. Market-Driven Approach: The panelists stressed the need for a market-driven approach, listening to the needs of businesses and making space for business leaders in the development of open standards and open-source code.
7. Realistic Conversations About Technology: There was a discussion about the importance of having real conversations about what the technology can do and not pursuing purist approaches that may not be consumable by the market.
8. Identifying Business Cases: The panelists discussed the need to identify business cases for the technology and solve problems that make the investment worthwhile for business decision-makers.
9. Adoption of Decentralized Identity: The discussion also covered the adoption of self-sovereign identity (SSI) and decentralized identity by large companies like Norton LifeLock, Apple, Google, and the focus of the EU on their digital identity wallet initiative.
10. Community Involvement and Learning Resources: The panelists shared resources about SSI, such as community meetings, pieces of training, meetups, and courses. They also suggested engaging with communities like Trust over IP, the Internet Identity Workshop, and Hyperledger.
11. The Future of Digital Identity: The panelists discussed the future of digital identity, digital wallets, and digital credentials. They mentioned the growing interest in this space and the need to protect digital identities.

Click here and find the complete keynote video!