Decentralized Identity: A tale of a University Graduate

Aim:

To illustrate the gains of a university graduate, employing the of Web 3.0 Decentralized Identity Model over the current-day Web 2.0 Database-centric model.

Typical Graduate Application Process

Ade, a university graduate, applies for postgraduate studies in foreign universities ($F = f_1, f_2, f_3, ... , f_n, n \in \N$). As proof of authenticity, her certificates needs be authenticated by the University $H$ where she bagged her Bachelors degree in her home country. For each university $f_i$ she needs a stamped, signed and certificate sealed and consigned to her prospective universities.

Financial Implication

$H$ charges $€k$ per student per university. The cost which covers consignment and inflated by insurance cost and denies Ade full-proof ownership of her certificate. Thus for $n$ universities, she incurs $€nk$.

Privacy

Now home university $H$ stores her data off in the database, prints and send on Ade's demand. Does this meet the Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) principle? No. This Web 2.0 model of storing data violates the fact that she solely own her identity, chooses how it is stored and sent over the internet.

Ade's Ordeal from a Web 3.0 Perspective.

Ade's certificates can be digitalized and stored of in cryptographic wallet from where she can do peer-to-peer issuance of her certificate. With this Decentralized Identifiers, a cryptography-backed unique universal identifier (cuuid), for the certificates and even subsets of her certificates. Such that if she applies for two courses in university $f_i$, an issuance of proof of validation from her digital wallet to course offering $f_{i,1}$, suffices for her to be able to subset the content of her credentials for course offering $f_{i,2}$.

In essence, using a peer-to-peer transaction, ousts intermediary-laden transaction costs, making education more cheaply accessible
The fact that she can choose how and where her data is stored, gives her more autonomy in privacy.

Let the wallet be an universal identification validation agent (u-iva) - an identity validation version of a stock exchange, where people can buy smart contracts to generate harshes for storing digital identities and can buy contracts to verify identities. Keeping a wallet here means all the certificates one own can be wound into one and subsets issued per time over peer-to-peer networks. For instance, I envisage documents verification cost equaling the transaction cost USDT 1 = $1 of sending USD Theter over a smart chain.

We shall illustrate this using the Hyperlegder Aries Model, as it tracks it closely but with major modification to concept.

Players

Ade - applicant and owner of certificates.
Donance - a borderless cryptographic document validation platform.
UniWest - a foreign university to requiring identity and document validation.