[rufasterisco]

Azure Active Directory is on its way to use DIDs [0]

The forces in place here seems to be:

- distributed ledgers allow a different (decentralized) paradigm for identity management, where users own their identities and service providers authorize and authenticate them through verifiable credentials

- years of blockchains and even more years of web certificates have created processes to handle cryptographic material, that service providers supposedly find more secure than "username and password" to manage the identities issuing the verifiable credentials

- in realpolitik, Microsoft (Azure) is expanding in the cloud market by trying to establish a presence in niches (ie: Intel SGX, DIDs) [1]

I understand the overall skepticism about blockchain related technologies, but the intrinsic advantages that I see in them are:

- (for a service provider) having a tamper-proof log of all the auth changes for an identity

- (for a service provider/user) relying on cryptographic signatures allows for a private validation of an identity/claim

- (for a user) provided this is not EEE allover again, a greater degree of choices on how to manage your identity

I do not have as much experience as you do, so maybe there is some wheel-reinventing that I am not aware of :)

0. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/veri...

1. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/identity-standards-bl...