22. DID : The Foundation for a Resiliant and Inclusive Society - Taipei 2023

[Music] so oh okay we can go back a little so I'm Noah and I think some of you know uh some of you know know me here so basically uh our team basically recently is working with Moda on building on a couple of series of different experimentations on decentralized IDs and so we're here basically Clem gave a very detailed talk about how the technical side work how the standard side work mine wouldn't be mostly about that mine will be how we think about the future of identities how we think about the future of decentralized identities in a sense so um I do want to talk a little bit about how people Define decentralized IDs because there are a lot of different narratives around decentralized IDs um from uh Clement's World from traditional ID world people talk about decentralized IDs with self Sovereign identity with all the data ownership which is more closer to the European uh narratives that's one kind of narratives there's also the narratives from the web three space right this which is coming from uh a Cil resistant kind of identity Solutions how you can how we can best represent ourselves as human being How We Do proof of humanity so resources can come to every single person in a very fair way and there's also the kind of narrative that's a lot more philosophical uh the sociologist sociologist the economists talk about identities in a more plural more relational sense in in a sense that identity is basically uh your identity doesn't exist you don't if you if not about the connections around you is if it's not about relationships around you if not about the actions you take in this world so there are a lot of different narratives coming together into this uh Di id decentralized id space which is all coming to the same space there are overlaps but they're not completely the same and it's helpful to clarify because then we have context of what kind of space what kind of uh uh scenarios that we're operating with these did Solutions and to give more context that those were the current scenario and and the current narratives right and given uh I I'll give you also a bit of hisory in the past 100 years Hannah Hannah arand basically talk about IDs as the right to have rights so she's talking about this in the more context of an individual in a in a political Community how do you to receive rights from the government how do you have we we have obligations as well right so the ID the purpose and the role of an ID is to form that relationship with the government and and so that's the the that's like 80 years ago that's what the what that was the definition and World Bank un gave this 2030 every single person on this Earth has to have legal identity and the you you can see the narrative changes a bit it becomes uh basic human rights somehow right so it changes a little bit and then it goes to the web fre space we have a lot more different we T talk about data ownership we talk about privacy and all this so as you can see identity is not a fixed concept identity is a product is a is a uh a rendition of the context and the values that we have in our era and in our time so that begs the question of what context what values are basically shaping our identity systems for the future why do we need the next ID system why do we need need decentralized ID systems so a couple of different Global context so the first one of course privacy right gdpr might gdpr is a very good movement however it might not be enough we might need something more fundamental that's embedded in our identity systems to better protect our data to better Pro protect our privacy so that is certainly one Trend that one demand that's shaping the future of identities the second one I don't need to talk about AI disinformation everybody here is probably familiar with that that front but the thing so but but I'll talk about a story so there were two researchers uh maybe maybe seven six years ago that this is pre chbt right so they sent they did a research uh which sent 7,000 emails to uh around a thousand legislators half of them are written by AI half of them are written by human beings the legislators have no idea which are from AI which are from and so and if you think about it now everyone can send 7,000 emails to legislators so in under this context that directly affects our democracy right that directly affects how the society actually works directly so so that is a big problem how do we better represent ourselves as human beings also as Citizens so that is a problem the third one one is the identity plight of international refugees so this is this is a big problem because um this doesn't seem that immed immediate for all of us and when we look at the word refugees we think think about war we think about political refugees but the the number is that um by 2050 there will be two billion refugees in the world because of climate change because people are forced to move away from where they're saying more forced to move away from their homes so um so how do we under these extreme conditions how do we help them uh to to preserve the the the power to verify who they are because if you know a thing or two about refugee camps when people cannot identify themselves cannot verify who they are when they go into refugee camps it's not staying there for for a couple of days a couple of weeks it's actually years and decades some some people even stay there for years so that so that is also a a huge problem that's shaping the world of identities and that is also why the World Bank United Nations think this is a very important question that we need to resolve the last one of course there are a lot of Technology promises technological promises zk's uh blockchain decentralized solutions that the blockchain community is bringing to the conversation there are a lot of possibility possibilities that we can build as well as digital democracy right there are so many different kinds of whether it be AI governance or not the The Divided Society needs to come together and form consensus somehow and that requires uh requires a base layer of fundamental and very uh uh solid ID identity systems so these are the context so given those context I think there are three things that we need to talk about when we talk about decentralized identities or the next identity system first of all we of course need to talk about control right can we control our identity can we control the data that we own and the reason we need control uh given if in extreme uh circumstances if we need to move out of our our country if War happens somehow if there are certain kind of Crisis control is really important we still need to uh be able to verify ourselves even if the centralized servers that is containing all of our identity are destroyed somehow um some somewhere somehow right and privacy is also a very important thing um so the you uh some of you probably heard of this story as well so when Russia invades Ukraine they took a little part of Ukraine and basically they ran a referendum there right and people go and they they need people to go and vote but when they're voting their Armed Forces standing right next to the voting boo Booth so that is not privacy right that is not the right to basically being able to to voice your opinions freely so that kind of privacy or even more is something we must uh uh talk about and the third one is interoperability so um I'm quoting the founders of ethereum ATT testation service so basically what they do uh uh what they talked about is the did systems that we building up until so far are kind of like glorified Silo centralized identity systems because they need people to adopt their system going to use their uh credential St uh standards to form their own identities but those credentials is very hard to move to other places so we need some kind of interruptable uh uh standards like maybe yes and others to make sure that wherever we have wherever we bring our actions wherever we bring our ials those can be represented in different formats of identity so those are the things that we're definitely looking at so of course there are marads of different examples Mars of different uh did initiatives in the world right now um some focus more on more on privacy some focus more on on on certain scenarios but all of these scenarios all of these are are all of these it systems are built uh for a certain context right they have their strong suits and they have their weaknesses the point is not that we need to adopt there's not going to be a one single identity standard in the future it's about we having a lot of different identities that can interruptable with each other so I'm going to talk a little bit about next okay the Taiwan context so um sorry so why what what drives the adoptions so as you can imagine the IDS will might probably will be a new form of ID systems and it takes some attractions or it takes some some fear for people to convert into a new ID system because that's the entry barrier right so we talk to some companies who are running did Solutions building did Solutions on theground when they talk to their users about the core key uh key factor the core core advantages of dids including control including privacy it's actually very hard in a pie relatively peaceful Society to convert users to get them to jump on to a new ID system although that people still think that's very important but to converting people to this new system is relatively hard and when we talk about interoperability if interop interoperability is more about Network effects right if you have more scenarios that can build build up on it if you have more people that can build up build up on it then it becomes attraction but to get to that point there's a certain there are certain steps we need to take there are a long way to go so of course the uh it's it's a little hard for us to push forward a new ID systems especially not forcefully in Taiwan especially if it's op uh w3c standard they suggested a uh many different uh scenarios that we can adopt these scenario scenarios are all very logical but on the other side when when it comes to a local context it's it may may not be that practical because the adoption Dynamic of the adoption how people are going to use this um for example they're basically uh eidas and Di uh their did standard is pushing forward um their college certificates as the did credential right and that is of course one scenario that makes perfect sense however if you only have a couple of schools jumping on board using these credentials that then that's not enough Network effect for the employer future employers to look at this and say okay you're going to be employed right so these are the things that we're basically looking at what are the starting points for dids did Solutions like the ones in Taiwan can start so we look at a couple of there are two interesting contexts in Taiwan that may fit the narratives of the IDS the first one is a little darker so it is the political struggle of Taiwan we all know uh we all understand that there is always the possibility of a potential War uh that that can be a can be a problem in Taiwan um I won't go into the political side of course and but on the other side on the brighter side there's very vibrant uh civic participation in Taiwan there's very vibrant uh policy deliberation processes that's being done in Taiwan there's very vibrant uh open source communities like GL zero in Taiwan so those are the things that we can build upon and we can build more more experience upon and so the directions the strategies that we're employing on one side of course we're trying to build resilience into uh decentralized ID systems or Taiwanese ID systems that but how to do that of course is a pro is a problem problem we'll we'll talk about it in a bit but how do we build resilience into ID system so when crisis come when something happens uh we can preserve a certain rights that we value and on the other hand how might we supercharge how might we uh supercharge the existing Democratic uh uh these uh experiments social experiments in Taiwan that's already ongoing that's already gotten a lot of attention attention internationally how do we continue to lead on that front because no matter what it is it can be CTIC funding it can be CTIC voting collusion resistant experiment it can also be AI deliberation platforms all of these requires a very fundamental layer of a sound ID system for these all of these systems to work so how might we achieve that so let me give you two examples so on one side the the demand and the need for example control and privacy in as mentioned in peaceful times people don't convert over that people care about those but people don't convert as much but those need will search uh will rise when uh when when Crisis happen right so how do how might we build a system to on board all the traditional identity formats into a decentralized formats at that moment it given that time window securely and fastly so basically we can Infuse resilience into everyone's identity systems so the design will be trying to get as much ID identity systems on board to be in a decentralized way another is how do we build this system to make sure that the transfer is fast enough is secure enough so when something happens then we can cope with and this kind of system also is like I said the global situation of refugees of people moving out of their country all of these can be a system that those situations can adopt as well on the other hand air power deliberation platform if in case you guys don't know what this is so is uh for example uh citizens given their opinions on a political policy and then these uh these opinions gets grouped gets clustered into different uh clusters and so we have a a big represent representation of what the community or what Society think about a specific issue that's and so we can find a way to reach consensus somehow and that if the fundamental layer if the AI if the IDS some of the IDS are represented by AI some of the IDS are represented by people who are not uh from this country then it becomes a problem because that is not a representation of what the society thinks right so these are the things that we're thinking about and if we do more of these de Democratic experiments based on DS then we have more uh social experiment stories to tell and more more implementation of how the can work in our real Society so basically that's uh the the the whole presentation and my point is that dids can be is probably not one system right the is it should be based on local context based on local need there will be myriads of ID systems that will SP sprung up and serve different scenarios however the point is how do these how do all of these different ID systems how do these credentials work across different Bo so we can bring our credential we can bring our identities to different formats to different scenarios how does the interoperability work and build a ID ecosystem instead of a ID system so that will be my present ation thank [Music] you