We do not use Hyperledger Aries, but thanks for showing us. I have a blockchain background, and Keyri is somewhat inspired by blockchain concepts, but we've stayed away from blockchain-based solutions for privacy reasons. The pseudonymity of traceable blockchain transactions (in the auth scenario, authentication request transmissions) do not provide adequate privacy. Apologies if I'm misinterpreting Aries - perhaps its ledger is not publicly viewable. I have other objections to blockchain-based identity solutions, but privacy is the main one.
Then there are other passwordless auth solutions employing "private blockchains". That term basically means "database" in my mind and is obviously not ideal from a privacy perspective.
Thankyou for taking the time to respond, and congratulations on the launch!
Aries leverages, Decentralized Identifiers[1] with Verifiable Credentials [2]
the "ledger" is where the public keys are stored. eg it could be a permission-ed ledger, similar to SSL certs only known/<want to be known> parties would publish their keys to the chain.
Example: Sovrin network [3]
Or could be permission-less, maybe focused more towards IoT/whatever
Example: ION Network [4] coming out of Microsoft.
The ledger is not a requirement to establish an identity as shown with the did:peer [5] method
Frankly I think the usage of blockchain was more to get on the marketing bandwagon at the time. Messaging is now moving from "blockchain" to "distributed ledger"
Understood, thanks. I think the concept is excellent - truly a digital ID card that you can present with a simple cryptographic token, thus a real "proof of identity". Keyri is "proof of ownership of a trusted device", which, while being a narrower concept, we believe is more palatable from a go-to-market perspective, since companies prefer to proof identities in their own proprietary way.
I agree, the worst part of the Aries project is the extreme egos associated with it - but i do really like the ideals.
Another example of over reach: Trust over IP [1]
Again congratulations of the launch, I am not advocating Aries but I am very interested. Especially the intersection of actual users (what you are doing) / pie-in-the-sky ideals
https://www.hyperledger.org/use/aries