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How “Self-Sovereign” Identity Can Avoid the Fate of “Digital Sovereignty”

1. Territory / Focus Summary

Core Insight: Sovereignty operates at multiple scales (individual, community, platform, nation-state, supranational) through negotiation between peers with reciprocal obligations—not feudal hierarchies where upper levels provision sovereignty to lower levels. Modern platforms seek sovereignty like Renaissance cities did, but they seek to provision sovereignty as a service rather than negotiate as peers. The threat: “self-sovereign identity” could be captured like “digital sovereignty” was—redefined from political capacity into commercial product.

Sovereignty only works when each scale can negotiate with the others as peers; when higher scales define sovereignty for lower ones, the result is feudal hierarchy, not self-determination.

Example: Grohmann’s analysis documents platform capture of “digital sovereignty”—showing the exact playbook SSI must avoid.

  • How the pattern unfolded in practice: (1) European civil society and governments coin “digital sovereignty” (2017–2020), demanding autonomy from Big Tech surveillance, cloud dependency, and platform power. Political movements assert: capacity to control digital infrastructure, not consumer service. (2) Big Tech responds with “sovereignty programs” (2020–2023): Microsoft launches “Cloud for Sovereignty,” Amazon offers a “Digital Sovereignty Pledge,” Google provides a “Digital Sovereignty Explorer.” Each promises sovereignty through their infrastructure. (3) Meaning shifts: from “autonomy from Microsoft” to “autonomy Microsoft provides through Azure”; from political capacity to commercial product; from collective control to individual consumer choice. Result: dependency concealed by autonomy rhetoric—organizations “achieve sovereignty” by becoming more dependent on the platforms they sought autonomy from.

    The capture pattern in summary: political term → platform “sovereignty programs” → meaning shift from capacity to product → deepened dependency → alternatives framed as impractical.

SSI vulnerability: This pattern is already emerging. If Microsoft ION, Google/Amazon identity services, or dominant wallet providers capture SSI implementations, “self-sovereign identity” becomes consumer service provisioned through proprietary platforms. User “control” becomes what platforms allow (revocable, conditional, limited), not what users inherently possess (inalienable, unconditional, complete).

Sovereignty requires “exit with dignity”—leaving a platform without losing identity, reputation, history, or community standing. Sovereignty provisioned is sovereignty controlled—just with better marketing. A simple peer test helps identify capture:

“Does the system allow individuals and communities to contest, exit, and form alternatives as peers, or must they accept sovereignty provisioned downward as a service?”

2. Relationship to Other Lenses

This lens examines sovereignty at multiple scales and how platforms provision sovereignty as service. It works with:

  • Right to Transact: Provides constitutional grounding for participation rights—freedom of assembly protects forming groups at any scale without permission. This lens examines what happens when groups form: can individuals/communities participate as peers negotiating sovereignty with mutual obligations, or must they rent sovereignty from platforms controlling terms unilaterally?

  • Anti-Property: Critiques property frameworks enabling commodification. This lens examines sovereignty frameworks—how platforms transform political capacity into commercial product creating feudal dependencies.

  • Relational Autonomy: Examines how identity emerges from relationships—community credentials, chama membership, family bonds. This lens examines sovereignty at community scale: for communities to issue credentials (chama membership proving trustworthiness, community standing), they need sovereignty as credential issuers without platform permission. Relational Autonomy provides relationship-aware architecture; this lens provides sovereignty framework ensuring communities can operate as peers, not subjects renting sovereignty from platforms. Community credentials require both relationship primitives (Relational Autonomy) AND community sovereignty (this lens).

Together: Right to Transact (participation rights), Anti-Property (anti-commodification), this lens (sovereignty at scales), Relational Autonomy (community credentials) prevent “self-sovereign” identity becoming “sovereignty-as-a-service.”

3. Why This Lens Matters for SSI

Historical precedent: Renaissance cities asserted sovereignty through commerce, diplomacy, alliances—but operated within reciprocal obligations to other sovereigns and could be contested. Modern platforms seek a sovereignty seat but provision sovereignty as a service they control, creating dependency rather than reciprocity. Sovereignty historically includes reciprocal obligations; platforms seeking sovereignty-like authority without accepting obligations create illegitimate, asymmetrical power.

Plasticity enables capture: “Self-sovereign identity” carries multiple meanings:

  • Technical (cryptographic key control)
  • Legal (GDPR rights, agency-law duties)
  • Political (autonomy from centralized providers)
  • Philosophical (Allen’s 10 principles)

This semantic plasticity gives platforms the opening to redefine the term, creating built-in capture vulnerability. Big Tech can embrace the technical definition (key control) while violating the political one (autonomy), commodify the legal one (GDPR rights as paid features), and even provision the philosophical one as a service (“we enable your sovereignty through our platform”).

However, these meanings all emerge from a largely individualist frame. Many sovereignty traditions—Indigenous, Ubuntu, cooperative—treat autonomy as relational and collective, revealing how SSI architectures optimized only for individual key control can erase entire sovereignty models and render them “out of scope.”

Counter-model needed: Popular digital sovereignty from below—social movements asserting autonomy through collective control of digital technologies, grounded in free/open-source principles, organized as political projects not commercial products, with peer relationships rather than feudal hierarchies. Sovereignty as an inalienable capacity, not a revocable service.

4. Key Harms, Risks, or Questions

  • Platform capture of sovereignty language: Microsoft “Cloud for Sovereignty,” Amazon “Digital Sovereignty Pledge” redefine political capacity into commercial product. “Self-sovereign” risks same fate—becomes service platforms provision rather than inherent capacity users possess.

  • Feudal sovereignty hierarchies: platforms dispense sovereignty downward as if it were theirs to grant. Users have “control” platforms grant rather than negotiate horizontally as peers. Creates dependency where sovereignty is conditional on platform relationship, revocable if platform changes terms.

  • Commodification of autonomy: Sovereignty-as-a-service makes autonomy purchasable product. Premium users get “more sovereignty” through paid features. Autonomy becomes market good, not inherent right.

  • Open-source marginalization: If Big Tech dominates SSI implementations through proprietary wallets, “self-sovereignty” becomes consumer service. Free/open-source alternatives marginalized as “hobbyist” solutions not “enterprise-ready.”

  • Sovereignty at single scale only: Focusing exclusively on individual sovereignty (key control) ignores community, platform, nation-state scales. Enables platforms to dominate higher scales while granting nominal individual control.

  • Lack of reciprocal obligations: Platforms seek sovereignty seat (set standards, control infrastructure) without accepting reciprocal obligations other sovereigns face (contestability, mutual recognition, negotiated terms). Feudal rather than peer model.

Individual cryptographic control without collective capacity creates atomized sovereignty—millions of “sovereign” individuals who cannot contest platform terms. Technical self-sovereignty can mask political powerlessness!

Example: A community adopts a “self-sovereign” wallet built on a major cloud provider. Keys remain local, but registries, updates, and verification pipelines depend on that provider’s infrastructure. Three years later, pricing changes or API rules shift—and the “sovereign” community cannot migrate without breaking its ecosystem.

5. Constructive Directions

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

  • Popular Digital Sovereignty from Below: Social movements asserting autonomy through collective control—free/open-source implementations, commons-based governance, peer relationships not hierarchies, political projects not commercial products.

  • Multi-Scalar Sovereignty Recognition: Sovereignty at individual, community, platform, nation-state levels with reciprocal obligations between scales. Platforms that seek sovereignty seat must accept contestability, negotiated terms, mutual recognition—not provision sovereignty downward.

  • Anti-Commodification Principles: Sovereignty as inherent capacity, not purchasable service. No “sovereignty tiers” (premium users get more autonomy). Autonomy is right, not market good.

6. How This Lens Might Inform the 2026 SSI Principles

Core Principle Proposal:

Self-sovereign identity must resist capture by platform sovereignty-as-a-service models. “Self-sovereignty” is political capacity inherent in individuals and communities, not commercial product platforms provision. Implementations must prioritize free/open-source foundations preventing platform monopolies from redefining sovereignty from autonomy into dependency. Sovereignty operates at multiple scales (individual, community, platform, nation-state) with reciprocal obligations between peers, not feudal hierarchies where platforms provision sovereignty downward on their terms.

Rationale: Grohmann documents platform capture of “digital sovereignty”—Microsoft, Amazon, Google transformed political movement term into commercial services deepening dependency. SSI faces same risk: if Big Tech dominates implementations, “self-sovereignty” becomes consumer service provisioned through proprietary wallets. Counter-model required: popular digital sovereignty from below, free/open-source implementations, peer relationships with reciprocal obligations, sovereignty as inherent capacity not rented service.

Integration: Works with Right to Transact (participation rights enabling group formation at all scales), Anti-Property (preventing sovereignty commodification), preventing “self-sovereign” identity from becoming “sovereignty-as-a-service” where platforms provision what should be inherent.

7. Selected Resources

  • Sovereignty-as-a-service: How big tech companies co-opt and redefines digital sovereignty (2025). [paper]. Grohmann, Rafael; Costa Barbosa, Alexandre. Media, Culture & Society, pp. 1-9. DOI: 10.1177/01634437251395003. Retrieved 2025-11-15 from: https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437251395003.

    SHORT ABSTRACT: Grohmann and Costa Barbosa analyze how Microsoft, Amazon, and Google strategically redefined digital sovereignty (2022-2023) through cloud programs responding to European regulatory pressure. Critical discourse analysis reveals convergent transformation: sovereignty shifts from political capacity (collective self-determination, state control) to commercial product (modular services purchased through proprietary platforms). Fundamental power inversion—platforms provision sovereignty on their terms rather than being subject to sovereign authority, naturalizing dependency while maintaining sovereignty rhetoric.

    WHY THIS MATTERS: Big Tech presents sovereignty as “a journey” leading to their own services—a pattern SSI faces directly. If Microsoft ION, Google/Amazon identity services, or dominant wallet providers capture SSI implementations, “self-sovereign identity” becomes consumer service provisioned on platform terms, not political capacity users inherently possess.

  • Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex (2015). [book]. Dyer-Witheford, Nick. Pluto Press. Digital Barricades series. ISBN: 978-0745334035. Available at: https://archive.org/details/cyberproletariat0000dyer.

    SHORT ABSTRACT: Dyer-Witheford examines digital capitalism’s dark side: coltan mines in Congo, electronics factories in China, devastated neighborhoods in Detroit. Using Marx’s vortex metaphor, he shows how the digital revolution enables capital to eject powerful workers while recruiting global sources of cheapened labour. He analyzes migrant assembly-line proletariat, free online labor fueling Web 2.0 profits, and high-speed trading’s AI dependency, while examining information technology’s potential within radical movements.

    WHY THIS MATTERS: Platform capitalism creates feudal dependencies masquerading as autonomy—”digital sovereignty” claimed by platforms actually deepens subordination through service dependency. This lens warns SSI against platforms seeking a sovereignty seat without accepting reciprocal obligations characteristic of peer sovereigns.

  • The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics (2016). [book]. Hui, Yuk. Urbanomic. ISBN: 978-0995455009. Publisher: https://www.urbanomic.com/book/question-concerning-technology-china/. Also: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780995455009/the-question-concerning-technology-in-china/.

    SHORT ABSTRACT: Hui responds to Heidegger’s “Question Concerning Technology” by arguing Western technē—tool for mastering nature—differs fundamentally from Chinese Dao-Qi, where technology harmonizes cosmic and ethical principles. He introduces “cosmotechnics”: the unification of cosmic and moral order through technical activities. Rather than accepting technological universalism, Hui argues for reconstructing Chinese technological thought capable of navigating modernity without mere westernization.

    WHY THIS MATTERS: Sovereignty isn’t a universal concept but culturally situated—Chinese “technological sovereignty” differs from European “digital sovereignty” in philosophical grounding and goals. Global SSI implementations must negotiate across traditions (Dao-Qi, Ubuntu, Indigenous sovereignty) rather than imposing a single Western model of self-determination.

8. Open Questions & Questions for the Broader Community

Open Questions

  1. Scale Architecture: How should sovereignty at different scales (individual, community, platform, state) relate to each other? Should SSI principles establish hierarchy (individual trumps community), subsidiarity (decisions at the most local appropriate scale), or perpetual negotiation between scales with no fixed priority?

  2. Peer Participation Requirements: What specific architectural and governance features enable genuine peer participation with reciprocal obligations—as opposed to feudal sovereignty-as-a-service provisioned downward? Can platforms ever meet these requirements, or does infrastructure control inherently preclude peer status regardless of governance structure?

  3. Capture Detection: How do we detect when “self-sovereign” rhetoric masks platform control? What indicators distinguish genuine political capacity (contestability, exit with dignity, ability to form alternatives) from consumer features dressed in sovereignty language (choice among vendor offerings within platform-controlled markets)?

Questions for the Broader Community

  1. Individual and Collective Sovereignty: How does individual self-sovereignty relate to popular sovereignty and democratic collective governance? Does individual cryptographic control enable meaningful participation in collective action, or does atomized “sovereignty” actually undermine the solidarity needed to contest platform power? How should SSI connect to broader movements—digital sovereignty, Indigenous data sovereignty, platform cooperativism—that assert collective rather than individual control?