Self-Sovereign Identity:
Ten Years Later, a Time to Reassess

Welcome to the Revisiting Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) Principles series of online workshops.

This initiative marks the ten-year anniversary of the original SSI principles in 2016. In the decade since their publication, SSI has evolved from a provocative idea into infrastructure deployed by governments, companies, communities, and open protocols. At the same time, the sociotechnical environment around identity has been transformed by new technologies and new platform models that challenge the assumptions of 2016.

The moment is right for us to ask:

  • What has worked?
  • What has drifted?
  • What harms or risks have emerged?
  • And what must evolve for SSI’s next decade?

This project is a multi-phase, 1-year-long effort to reassess, update, and strengthen the Ten Principles of SSI.

Phase 1 Goals

Our goals in Phase 1 are to:

  • Map the problem space through interdisciplinary perspectives
  • Surface emerging harms, risks, and tensions in digital identity systems
  • Explore new lenses that reveal blind spots or opportunities
  • Build shared understanding across diverse backgrounds
  • Develop brief scoping papers (Lens Exploration Briefs) that seed deeper research and technical work
  • Move toward rough consensus on worthy insights about the principles
  • Inform both an updated set of SSI principles and other high-level strategies for reducing societal harms from digital identity systems

We are not writing standards, specifications, protocols, or product designs at this stage. We are instead engaging in high-level conceptual, ethical, and strategic inquiry, the groundwork on which principled SSI work must rest.

Kickoff Meetings

To accommodate global participation, Phase 1 begins with two Zoom kickoff meetings:

Kickoff Meeting 1 — EU/US time compromise

  • Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025
  • 10:00am PT / 7:00pm CET

Kickoff Meeting 2 — EU/Tokyo time compromise

  • Tuesday, December 9th, 2025 (Tokyo local)
  • 3:00pm Tokyo / 7:00am CET / (10:00pm PT Monday for the host)

How to Join

Zoom links will be shared only through the following channels:

  • Private Signal group: https://signal.group/#CjQKIGvXAxLVq2z08-ckRWSlUIdRvX95lFh2APQaE0Oh_KFvEhB1R_7kkWDa9Oi3fh7R_I-a
  • Email announcement list: https://www.blockchaincommons.com/subscribe/#ssi-tenth-anniversary

New participants must join one of these channels to receive meeting invitations. If you cannot attend either kickoff meeting, join the Signal group to connect with Working Circles forming after the meeting.

Timeline & Milestones

This initiative unfolds across multiple phases, culminating in publication of revised SSI principles for the ten-year anniversary of the original principles (April 26th, 2016):

Phase 1 (Dec 2025 - Jan 2026): Lens Exploration Briefs mapping the problem space and surfacing strategic directions

Phase 2 (Feb - Mar 2026): Development of selected briefs into full papers; deeper research and cross-lens synthesis

Phase 3 (Apr 2026): Drafting revised SSI principles informed by Phase 1-2 work; preparation for April 28th, 2026 publication (targeting CoinDesk and other venues)

Ongoing (May - Dec 2026): Finalizing papers for peer review, conference presentations, and broader community engagement

Who Should Participate?

This initiative needs diverse perspectives working together. We explicitly seek participants from different disciplines, backgrounds, and roles:

  • Academic & Research Participants: All outputs are designed as citable scholarly contributions
  • Developer & Builder Participants: Your implementation experience grounds principles in reality
  • Policy, Regulatory & Legal Participants: Essential perspectives on feasibility and institutional adoption
  • Advocacy, Community & Lived-Experience Participants: Irreplaceable knowledge about how identity systems function in practice
  • Early-Career Researchers & Students: Fresh perspectives that often bridge gaps between communities

To help ensure a shared foundation, we recommend participants read these materials before the kickoff meetings:

Estimated total reading time: ~90 minutes

Who Is Christopher Allen?

Christopher Allen is an Internet trust architect, entrepreneur, and long-time advocate for human dignity and autonomy online. He co-authored the IETF Transport Layer Security (TLS) standard, helped shape early decentralized identity ecosystems, and authored the first articulation of the Ten Principles of Self-Sovereign Identity in 2016.

As the founder and moderator of the Rebooting the Web of Trust workshops and the Principal Architect at Blockchain Commons, Christopher has spent decades convening interdisciplinary communities to explore decentralized identity, human-centered digital wallets, governance models, rights-preserving infrastructure, and open research.

Contact

For more information: ChristopherA@LifeWithAlacrity.com