What does “Self-Sovereign” Identity (SSI) mean?
A verifiable claims ecosystem that is self-sovereign has the following qualities:
• Users can control and own their own identifiers.
• Users can control which verifiable claims to use and when.
• Users are positioned in the middle between claims issuers and claims inspectors.
• Users receive and store verifiable claims from issuers through an agent that the issuer does not need to trust.
• Users provide verifiable claims to inspectors through an agent that inspectors needn’t trust; they only need to trust issuers.
• Verifiable claims are associated with users, not particular services; users can decide how to aggregate claims and manage their own digital identities.
• Users may freely choose and swap out the agents they employ to help them manage and share their verifiable claims.
• Does not require users that share verifiable claims to reveal the identity of the consumer to their agent or to issuers.
In a self-sovereign system, users exist independently from services. To contrast, in a service-centric system users are tightly bound to a particular service.
Source: https://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/charter/faq.html
