Identity Wallets are not Crypto Wallets

Identity Wallet (not Crypto Wallets)

Tuesday 2D

Convener: Daniel Hardman

Notes-taker(s): Karan Verma

Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:

- What is an identity wallet? 

• Digital container belonging to a single identity owner that holds secrets, money, credentials, and miscellaneous related items. 
• Implement best practices and standards for distributed secrets and key management, for maximum security and privacy 
• Has an identifiable location on hardware 
• Unit of portability - mostly, move a wallet, move an identity.

- Question Why is it called a wallet? 

• Because of cryptocurrency wallet 
• Is there a better name? 
  • Holder
  • Keychain 

- What is and should be stored in an indy wallet? 

Bunch of different things that go into an identity wallet 

• Key pairs 
• Cryptocurrency keys and HDKeys indexes 
• Link secret 
• Policy address (and agency policy registry doc?)
• Cred def keys 
• Credentials 
• Symmetric keys 
• Tails indexes, witnesses 
• Cache of other party’s pub keys -> microliter 
• Tails file -> file system (not private) 
• Proofs from others? 
• Other identity info 

- Cryptocurrency wallet != identity wallet 

• Cryptocurrency wallets just hold keys 
• How many things do you put in a cryptocurrency wallet
• Some put your secrets in cloud, managed by another party 
  • Identity wallet cannot be all in the cloud 

- Vault != wallet 

• Vault is virtual construct — same boundary as a domain
• Includes data of all kinds, located in all places under owner control: wallets, proofs, genome, tax and legal records, private docs..
• Security and privacy of a vault is not standardized

Comment

• Identity wallet vs cryptocurrency wallet 
  • Need to put lot of data in the wallet
  • Hardware to store symmetric keys 
  • There are different requirement 
    • There are different use cases and they are not exactly the same thing. 

Questions 

• Natural scope of a wallet is similar in the digital world and physical world 
• Stateless refuge location 
• Self sovereign identity for my connections 
  • In a at risk situations, can I get to my wallet through biometrics? Is that somehow connected to the wallet? 
  • Keys are tied to relationships, when you have a wallet you have your connections. 
  • Wallet are set of things which are on a particular device. 
• Curious about identity - people cannot take away from you - does self-sovriegn apply to wallet/ is it completely in users control? 
  • Self-soverignity has to be a characteristic of the wallet. 
  • There is difference b/w verifiable information and sensitive information. 

Browser Password Synch: sensitive data is never stored on the server, probably should have one wallet. Shouldn’t probably make that distinction b/w cryptocurrency wallet and identity wallet

• Distinction made for implementers not for users - Users get a unified experience.