Sovrin

The Sovrin Foundation is a private-sector, international non-profit that was established to govern the world’s first Self-sovereign Identity Network.

Self-Sovereign: if an identity can be revoked, or the rules changed, by anyone other than its owner, it isn’t sovereign.

Your control over your Sovrin identity cannot be revoked. The Sovrin platform itself is also sovereign, as it is controlled by consensus of its independently owned and operated nodes and not by anyone or anything else. This is made possible using Distributed Ledger technology.

Unlike Sovrin, permissionless blockchains (like Bitcoin) typically use proof of work to reach consensus among the nodes, where anyone with a computer can serve as a node by performing the required work (solving a complex cryptographic puzzle before anyone else).

These anonymous systems can have groundbreaking advantages for some applications, such as cryptocurrencies.

In contrast, Sovrin utilizes a public permissioned distributed ledger (permissioned blockchain) - that provides public access for identity owners while permitting only known, trusted, vetted entities to serve as nodes.

This provides the greater transparency — and higher comfort level - some applications and industries require, while still not relying on any intermediary or central authority. For a thorough, authoritative discussion of this topic, see Tim Swanson’s seminal work.

To keep nodes synchronized, Sovrin utilizes Plenum, an advanced distributed consensus algorithm developed by Evernym.

Why did Evernym invent, build, and open source an entirely new distributed ledger that’s engineered for the sole purpose of identity? That’s easy. It’s the only way to finally do identity right. site

This sure seems like the kind of identity service to whom we would like to delegate our need for identity. What would a security plugin look like based on Sovrin?