This file contains a list of selection criteria for standardizing an initial set of DID methods. This is one of the activities of the DID Methods WG as described in its Charter.
Also see slides and recording of the 4th Dec 2024 WG meeting with a summary of selection criteria proposed by the community.
Feel free to create issues and pull requests on this repository to discuss and propose changes to the initial list of selection criteria.
| Criteria |
|---|
| Alignment with DID Core specification |
| Security and privacy features |
| Scalability and performance |
| Ease of implementation and use |
| Community adoption and support |
| Compliance with relevant regulations and best practices |
| Global government-approved crypto |
| Privacy-preserving crypto |
| Digitally signed cryptographic log of changes to the DID Document |
| Multi-factor binding to DNS |
| Specification with multiple implementers |
| Scope/domain of the types of entities/subjects addressed/named by a particular method |
| Estimate of the daily transaction volume of each scope/domain |
| DID Methods that do not serve the needs of a particular company or government |
| Governance: Clear frameworks for updates, dispute resolution, and decision-making |
| Usability: Simple implementation for developers |
| Sustainability: Energy efficiency and eco-friendly infrastructure |
| Economic Feasibility: DIDs costs of use must be reasonable |
| Legal Recognition: Cross-border frameworks for DID acceptance |
| Revocation and Recovery: Decentralized mechanisms for key rotation and DID recovery |
| Emerging Markets: Offline-friendly, low-bandwidth |
| Long-lived DIDs needed for long-lived VCs |
| Low and predictable marginal cost at scale (millions of accounts) |
| Ability to create and update identifiers rapidly (within seconds |
| Support for key rotation |
| Reliable and predictable-latency operation, for updating and resolving |
| Resolution should not require additional state or context |
| DIDs are permanent and immutable account identifiers |
| Consider support for various DID Traits: https://identity.foundation/did-traits/ |
| Consider categories defined by DID Rubric: https://www.w3.org/TR/did-rubric/ |
| Meta-Criteria |
|---|
| Who WANTS to standardize the DID method and commits to doing the work? |
| Are there AT LEAST two WG members who support standardization of a DID method? |
| Are there no trademark or IP issues? |
| Diversity of the set of selected DID methods |
| At least one ephemeral DID method |
| At least one web-based DID method |
| At least one fully decentralized DID method |