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How SSI Enables Credible Commitments Without Exploitative Lock-In

1. Territory / Focus Summary

Core Insight: Ulysses, knowing he would be drawn to the Sirens’ song, ordered his crew to bind him to the mast. He didn’t lose autonomy by being tied to the mast—he exercised it. This story captures a profound truth: the freedom to bind yourself is essential for human flourishing. We make binding commitments constantly—chama members accept attendance requirements, professionals adopt ethics codes, we enter marriages and take vows. These commitments work because they constrain. The ability to make credible commitments allows present-self to bind future-self, preventing akrasia and enabling others to rely on your constancy. Instant revocability protects autonomy, but if everything is instantly revocable, nothing is credibly committed. This lens examines the positive value of voluntary constraint—the human capacity to accept commitments that enable trust, cooperation, and long-term coordination.

The design challenge: How can SSI enable commitments strong enough to be credible without ever becoming commitments strong enough to be exploitative? The difference between productive constraint and lock-in is not the presence of obligation, but the presence of reciprocity, transparency, and meaningful exit.

Example: Consider chamas (Kenyan savings groups)—Ian Grigg’s Identity Cycle shows how mutual obligations create reliability and shared benefit. Members commit to attendance, regular contributions, and reciprocal support. These constraints are productive: voluntary participation, clear benefits, exit rights with proportionate costs, mutual stakes, and bounded scope. This contrasts with exploitative lock-in: hidden extraction costs, asymmetric power (you’re bound; the platform isn’t), prohibitive exit that destroys accumulated value, and opaque, expanding obligations. Both involve constraint—what makes one cooperative and the other coercive?

2. Relationship to Other Lenses

This lens addresses positive value of voluntary constraint—how SSI enables valuable binding commitments without creating exploitative lock-in. It works with:

  • Choice Architecture: Examines structural lock-in where individually voluntary choices accumulate into permanent dependencies. This lens distinguishes productive constraints (chama membership with exit rights) from exploitative lock-in (platform vendor lock-in destroying accumulated value). Key insight: constraints aren’t inherently harmful—design determines whether they enable cooperation or exploitation.

  • Principal Authority: Addresses delegation relationships where agents owe enforceable duties. Binding commitments create different relationships—mutual obligations among peers (chama members), self-binding to overcome akrasia (Ulysses contracts), long-term coordination enabling planning. Both involve voluntary constraint, but agency law focuses on duty-bearing delegation while this lens focuses on credible commitment mechanisms.

  • Right to Transact: Protects participation rights—can you join credential networks without permission? This lens asks: once you’ve joined, what productive commitments enable trust and cooperation? Rights to participate combine with ability to commit credibly.

  • Stewardship: Addresses guardianship as special case of binding commitment with absolute power asymmetry. Parent-child guardianship is 18-year commitment relationship BUT lacks the characteristics of productive commitment: child didn’t voluntarily join, has no negotiating power, cannot exit even if harmful, guardian’s obligations are enforceable only through law not mutual stakes. Requires special calibration: this lens’s productive vs. exploitative framework helps distinguish genuine care (empowerment, revocability, accountability) from exploitative control (permanent lock-in, no accountability, irrevocability).

Together: Right to Transact (can you join?), this lens (can you commit?), Choice Architecture (can you leave?), Principal Authority (what duties exist?), Stewardship (how do commitments work when power is absolutely asymmetric?).

3. Why This Lens Matters for SSI

SSI today has a credibility gap: it protects against coercion but offers few mechanisms for commitments strong enough to be trusted. Constraints become valuable when they allow others to rely on you; without credible commitment, coordination collapses—not because people are malicious, but because they cannot depend on future-self to honor present-self’s intentions.

Current SSI architecture emphasizes four lenses on how coercion harms but gives minimal attention to when constraints are valuable rather than harmful. This lens provides needed balance: constraints aren’t always harmful; binding commitments enable cooperation, trust, and autonomy—paradoxically—through self-limitation.

Every productive commitment includes an emergency escape clause—an unconditional right to exit in cases of abuse, fraud, or exploitation. Without this safety valve, constraint becomes captivity rather than cooperation.

Three categories of binding commitment:

1. Ulysses Contracts (Self-Binding): Present-self binding future-self to prevent anticipated lapses. Examples: Savings accounts with early withdrawal penalties, commitment devices for habit formation (StickK financial stakes), screen time limits requiring effort to override, professional credentials requiring ongoing competence demonstration. SSI applications: credentials that can’t be immediately revoked (24-hour cooling-off period), professional licenses requiring continuing education, reputation scores that decay slowly (preventing impulsive credential abandonment).

2. Mutual Obligation Systems: Communities with reciprocal commitments enabling trust and resource pooling. Chamas work through mutual stakes (everyone has skin in game), clear benefits (participation creates value), exit rights (can leave, though with costs), bounded context (obligations are scoped). SSI applications: community credential issuers with membership obligations, mutual verification networks with participation requirements, reputation systems with reciprocity expectations, professional credential systems with ongoing duties.

3. Long-Term Coordination: Commitments enabling planning, investment, cooperation over time. Marriage commitment signals long-term partnership intent, employment contracts enable investment in training, loan agreements enable access to capital. SSI applications: time-bounded credentials with renewal requirements, commitments with graduated exit costs (proportionate to duration), reputation accumulation through demonstrated reliability.

The SSI tension: Agency Law (Principal Authority lens) insists that principals must be able to revoke authority at any time, while commitment theory insists that commitments must not be too easy to revoke or they lose their binding force. These seem contradictory, but they can be reconciled through calibrated revocability: commitments are always revocable (no irrevocable commitments), yet revocation may involve proportionate, graduated exit costs once others have reasonably relied on your commitment. Exit must never be prohibitive, but it need not be free; costs can scale with commitment duration and mutual stakes. Emergency escape— in cases of abuse, fraud, or exploitation—must always be available, and commitments should be time-bounded by default (expiring unless consciously renewed).

Structural differences distinguishing productive from exploitative:

Productive Binding Commitment Exploitative Lock-In
Clear benefits from participation Hidden costs, one-sided extraction
Mutual obligations (symmetry) Asymmetric power (platform extracts)
Exit rights preserved (with costs) Exit impossible or prohibitively costly
Bounded scope Scope creep over time
Transparent terms Opaque or incomprehensible terms
Negotiated duration Permanent irrevocable commitment
Emergency escape clauses No escape regardless of harm

4. Key Harms, Risks, or Questions

Under-commitment harms (when inability to bind future-self destroys cooperation):

  • Trust failures from pure revocability: Can’t signal long-term reliability when all commitments instantly revocable. Consider chama implementing SSI credentials for membership. If membership instantly revocable with no consequence, present-self cannot credibly commit future-self to sustained participation. You join with good intentions but can abandon the group the moment participation becomes inconvenient—with no graduated exit cost reflecting others’ reliance on your commitment. Other members cannot trust your commitment when it’s costlessly escapable—destroying mutual obligation foundation enabling savings pooling. Individual sovereignty prevents collective coordination.

  • Access barriers: Credit requires demonstrated commitment capacity—lenders need assurance borrowers won’t simply revoke repayment commitment. If SSI makes all commitments instantly revocable with no graduated costs, borrowers cannot prove reliability. Those whose only trust signal is sustained commitment face exclusion from credit, housing, employment. Pure revocability creates access barriers for exactly those who most need commitment mechanisms.

  • Akrasia unchecked: Present-self wants to save for retirement, exercise regularly, limit screen time—but knows future-self will spend impulsively, skip workouts, binge social media. Needs commitment device creating hard-but-not-impossible exit costs. Instant costless revocability prevents Ulysses contracts enabling present-self to bind future-self against anticipated failures of will.

Over-commitment harms (exploitative lock-in masquerading as binding commitment):

  • Platform feudalism: Locked into proprietary systems where “commitment” is vendor lock-in. Asymmetric binding (you’re bound, platform isn’t). Exit destroys accumulated value, trapped despite exploitation.

  • Irreversible mistakes: Youthful indiscretions follow forever, no rehabilitation. Permanent credentials with no time-bounding or graduated exit.

  • Scope creep: Bounded commitment expands over time through unilateral changes. Bait-and-switch where obligations start narrow and expand without re-consent.

Design challenge harms (SSI systems failing to distinguish productive from exploitative):

  • Pure revocability undermines commitment value (can’t trust commitments instantly revocable)
  • No graduated costs creates moral hazard (abandon commitments costlessly)
  • Platform lock-in branded as “commitment” (exploitative constraint as feature)
  • Community obligations dismissed as “coercion” (missing positive dimension)
  • No mechanisms for Ulysses contracts (can’t bind future-self when needed)

5. Constructive Directions

These aren’t comprehensive solutions—they’re provocations for exploration:

  • Graduated Exit Costs: Recent commitments easy to exit (minimal costs), long-term commitments have proportionate costs (not prohibitive, but reflecting invested time/mutual stakes). Example: Leave chama after 1 month—minimal costs. Leave after 5 years—lose accumulated reputation, partial savings pool access. Costs calibrated to commitment duration.

  • Time-Bounded by Default: Commitments expire unless affirmatively renewed (mutual re-consent). Permanent credentials presumptively problematic. Professional licenses require renewal, memberships have terms, commitments have duration. Renewal is mutual commitment—both parties re-consent, not unilateral continuation.

  • Mutual Stakes (Symmetry): If you’re bound, counterparty is too. Chamas work because everyone has obligations. Platform lock-in fails because asymmetric—you’re bound, platform isn’t. Binding commitments require reciprocity, not one-sided constraint.

6. How This Lens Might Inform the 2026 SSI Principles

Tension with Agency Law Revocability: Principal Authority lens emphasizes principals can revoke delegation “at any time.” This lens emphasizes value comes from NOT being instantly revocable.

Resolution - Core Principle Proposal (Calibrated Revocability):

Principals can always revoke commitments, BUT revocation may involve proportionate costs reflecting commitment duration and mutual stakes—not prohibitive (don’t trap people), but not free (enabling credible commitment). Costs must be: transparent (known in advance), bounded (proportionate to investment), declining or stable (not increasing arbitrarily), with emergency override (abuse, fraud, exploitation → immediate exit regardless). SSI must enable credible binding commitments while preserving exit rights through: (1) Time-bounded commitments expiring unless renewed (default impermanence); (2) Graduated exit costs proportionate to duration and mutual stakes; (3) Mutual obligations ensuring symmetry (you’re bound, so are they); (4) Bounded scope preventing creep (no expansion without re-consent); (5) Emergency escape clauses. The freedom to bind yourself is essential for autonomy; the freedom to exit binding is essential for preventing exploitation.

Rationale: Grigg’s Identity Cycle demonstrates productive voluntary constraint through chamas—voluntary participation with mutual obligations works when mutual stakes, clear benefits, exit rights, and bounded context make constraint valuable rather than exploitative. Elster’s Ulysses contracts show self-binding enables present-self to commit future-self against akrasia. Schelling’s Strategy of Conflict shows credible commitments create strategic advantage by limiting your own future options, making commitments believable to others. Without binding mechanisms, cooperation fails—can’t signal trustworthiness, can’t participate in mutual obligation systems, can’t overcome weakness of will.

Integration: Works with Choice Architecture (distinguishing productive constraint from lock-in), Principal Authority (balancing revocability with commitment value), Right to Transact (participation rights + commitment ability). Together: participation rights + commitment mechanisms + exit rights + delegation duties = comprehensive framework enabling cooperation without exploitation.

7. Selected Resources

  • The Identity Cycle (2021). [book]. Grigg, Ian. Best Print Co. Ltd, Malta. ISBN (Print): 978-9918-0-0121-7. ISBN (PDF): 978-9918-0-0122-4. 161 pages. Available from: https://iang.org/identity_cycle/. License: Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0.

    SHORT ABSTRACT: Grigg argues that identity is an outcome of community, not captured state. Through rigorous analysis of identity theory, trust mechanics, Dunbar’s number, and real-world validation via Kenyan chamas (savings groups), he demonstrates that peer-based identity in small trusted groups (10-30 people) with mutual financial stakes is the only model that hasn’t failed. Provides devastating critique of state IDs, corporate data, PKI, and Web of Trust, then proposes group-forming networks with skin in the game as foundation for digital identity systems.

    WHY THIS MATTERS: Exemplifies productive voluntary constraint—chamas work through mutual obligations, clear benefits, exit rights, and bounded scope. People voluntarily join structures with mutual stakes when constraint becomes valuable rather than exploitative. Provides model for SSI commitment mechanisms: credible constraints enabling cooperation by binding individual opportunism.

  • Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality (1979). [book]. Elster, Jon. Cambridge University Press. Revised edition 1984. ISBN: 978-0521269841. Available at: https://archive.org/details/ulyssessirensstu0000elst.

    SHORT ABSTRACT: Elster analyzes precommitment strategies—how rational agents bind themselves against future weakness of will, as Ulysses bound himself before the Sirens. The book proceeds from perfect rationality through imperfect rationality (where binding overcomes myopic impulses) to problematic rationality (games without solutions). Key insight: humans uniquely relate strategically to their future selves, using constraints to achieve goals their unconstrained future selves would abandon.

    WHY THIS MATTERS: Foundational theory for Ulysses contracts—autonomy includes not just freedom of choice but freedom to constrain one’s own future choices. Present-self constraining future-self enables rational long-term achievement despite predictable failures of will. Essential for SSI commitment mechanisms.

  • The Strategy of Conflict (1960). [book]. Schelling, Thomas C. Harvard University Press. ISBN: 978-0674840317. Publisher: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674840317.

    SHORT ABSTRACT: Schelling pioneered the application of game theory to real-world strategic behavior in negotiation, war, and deterrence. He introduced foundational concepts including “focal points” (naturally salient solutions in coordination) and “credible commitment” (binding oneself to strengthen negotiating position). Counter-intuitively, he showed that limiting one’s own options can increase bargaining power, and uncertain retaliation is more credible than certain retaliation. Nobel Prize 2005.

    WHY THIS MATTERS: Game theory classic showing commitment problems are central to cooperation—without ability to bind yourself, others can’t trust your promises. Strategic self-limitation creates credibility enabling trust and coordination impossible with pure flexibility. “Burning bridges” makes commitments believable.

  • Commitment Devices (2010). [paper]. Bryan, Gharad; Karlan, Dean; Nelson, Scott. Annual Review of Economics, Vol. 2, pp. 671-698. Retrieved 2025-11-27 from: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.economics.102308.124324. Also available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1693017.

    SHORT ABSTRACT: Bryan, Karlan, and Nelson review evidence on commitment devices—mechanisms people use to constrain future choices and overcome self-control problems. The paper distinguishes hard commitments (binding constraints) from soft commitments (psychological aids), examines conditions when commitment devices are demanded, and evaluates field evidence on their effectiveness. Policy implications include applications to sin taxes, consumer protection, and optimal commitment device design.

    WHY THIS MATTERS: Empirical evidence that people actively seek commitment mechanisms to constrain future-self when present-self recognizes future failures of will. Distinguishes hard vs. soft commitments with policy implications. Shows demand for self-binding mechanisms across domains—savings, exercise, smoking cessation—validating SSI commitment device design.

8. Open Questions & Questions for the Broader Community

Open Questions

  1. Commitment Enforcement: Who enforces binding commitments in SSI? Technical protocols (time-locks, graduated costs), community governance (arbitration, reputation), legal systems (contracts, fiduciary duties), or pure social norms? What mix creates credibility without coercion?

Questions for the Broader Community

  1. Platform vs. Community Commitments: Should SSI explicitly distinguish community mutual obligations (productive) from platform lock-in (exploitative)? Or is any distinction paternalistic? Can we create structural criteria avoiding content judgment?