September 4, 2018
The Utah Sov
rin Meetup group recently hosted a Developer Brown Bag in Provo, UT that brought together developers from throughout the digital identity ecosystem.
Software engineers from BYU’s Pico Labs and the Sovrin community came together with programmers and enthusiasts from companies like Evernym and ControlFusion to talk about Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Pico Engines.
Bruce Conrad from Pico Labs engaged the group in a compelling demonstration of DIDs. He passed out a piece of paper to all attendees with a QR code printed on it. This QR code supplied a URL with a unique ‘DID’ for everyone. A scanned QR code then greeted new ‘DID’ owners with an entry to give a nickname, catchphrase and a recovery code. The idea was to create a digital name badge for everyone, which is being managed by a Pico Labs. After the creation of a badge, each attendee was given a new QR code with a ‘DID’ supplied by a mobile web page for establishing connections – with a list of their connections and a rating of how many connections they have compared with others. Bruce explained that when you scan another badge’s QR code you gain a pairwise connection between that individual’s badge and yours. Bruce challenged the group, “see how many connections you can make while you meet with others.” While Bruce’s concepts are still developing, this was a successful demonstration of how DIDs can be used to replace traditional username-password logins and produced many meaningful discussions on the topic.
Spencer Holman from BYU said, “I think these are the ideas that can change the way we live in several years, and I just want to be a part of that and want to help support it.”
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