The State of Self-Sovereign Identity in Spring 2021: Results of a Survey

Gabriella Laatikainen, Ravikant Agrawal, Xiaofeng Wang & Pekka Abrahamsson THE STATE OF SELF-SOVEREIGN IDENTITY IN SPRING 2021 Results of a survey JYU REPORTS 8 1University of Jyväskylä, Faculty of Information Technology, Finland 2Blocksterlab, India 3University of Bolzano, Italy Copyright © 2021, by University of Jyväskylä Permanent link to this publication: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-39-8849-4 ISBN 978-951-39-8849-4 (PDF) URN:ISBN:978-951-39-8849-4 DOI: 10.17011/jyureports/2022/8 ISSN 2737-0046 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). The state of Self-Sovereign Identity in spring 2021 3 Executive summary ............................................................................................................. 4 Key highlights ....................................................................................................................... 5 Survey development, data collection and analysis ....................................................... 6 The background of the respondents .............................................................................. 7 The state of Self-Sovereign Identity in spring 2021 ............................................... 11 Perceived benefits and challenges ............................................................................... 15 Acknowledgment.............................................................................................................. 16 Figure 1. The country of the respondents ..................................................................... 7 Figure 2. Role of the respondent in their organization ................................................ 8 Figure 3. Industry sector of the respondent’s organizations ...................................... 8 Figure 4. The number of employees in the respondents’ organization .................... 9 Figure 5. Age of the organization ..................................................................................... 9 Figure 6. Self-assessed innovativeness of the organization in general ................. 10 Figure 7. The phase of SSI adoption for the respondents’ organization ............... 10 Figure 8. Actors in the respondents’ SSI ecosystem ................................................. 11 Figure 9. The role of the respondents’ organization in its SSI ecosystem ............ 12 Figure 10. Attitude towards SSI adoption ................................................................... 13 Figure 11. The number of VCs in production in the respondent’s SSI solution .. 13 Figure 12. The number of years when SSI becomes mainstream in the respondents’ domain................................................................................................ 14 Figure 13. Accepted payment methods for SSI services .......................................... 14 The state of Self-Sovereign Identity in spring 2021 4 We live in times when digital trust has become increasingly important. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) has been considered a technology, architecture, and human-centric paradigm that promises to provide trustful digital identity, and trustworthy digital interactions. Currently, SSI is under rapid development, where open-source communities, governments, private and public institutions, and individuals collaborate toward the vision of a more private, secure, and trustworthy digital world. This report explores the state of SSI as seen through the eyes of 79 SSI experts. The data was collected in March-April 2021 via a survey distributed to active community members of the digital identity and self-sovereign identity domain. The results suggest that SSI affects the whole society: it might disrupt all industries and impact various actors. While the journey toward SSI mass adoption has just started, and the experts face many challenges on this journey, they also value the benefits of the technology and strongly support its adoption. The state of Self-Sovereign Identity in spring 2021 5 • According to the SSI experts, despite the rapid development, SSI is still beginning the journey towards mass adoption. However, almost 60% of the respondents estimate mass adoption within the next three years. • While 55% of the respondents have just started exploring SSI, more than 7% have already issued, or are associated with more than 100.000 Verifiable Credentials. • The variety of actors and roles in an SSI ecosystem needs more investigation as the community did not establish a common understanding of the terms. • Most SSI experts, who answered the survey, work for small, innovative startups that might indicate the emergence of new startups and new business models. • SSI affects the whole society: actors of SSI ecosystems consist of businesses, non-profit organizations, public institutions, governments, and individuals. • SSI may disrupt industries: 25+ industries were mentioned as the industry of the respondents’ SSI ecosystems. • SSI experts favor universal, globally accepted payment methods, such as stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. • SSI experts mostly agree on the benefits of SSI; however, their perception related to risks is very fragmented. • The top three benefits for society are (1) trustful, secure and private digital interactions; (2) data owners’ possibility to control their data and (3) digital transformation. • The top three benefits for the organization are (1) innovations, (2) strategic alliances, and (3) competitive advantage. • The top three challenges of SSI are related to (1) user experience, (2) immaturity of the technology, and (3) lack of interoperability and standards. The state of Self-Sovereign Identity in spring 2021 6 Since SSI is an emerging technology, first, we applied an exploratory qualitative method to understand the phenomenon more deeply. Primarily we gathered qualitative data by asking for insights from the TrustOverIP Foundation’s members. Some members gave us interviews, some commented on the survey questions and suggested modifications by email, and we also had several detailed workshop discussions related to the survey. Thus, the survey development was a collaborative effort, an iterative process with many adjustments and modifications. Here, the authors thank the help and input to the survey, especially for the following SSI experts: David Luchuk, Karl Kneis, Gene Dimira, Herzig Justin, Annegret Henninger, Kapil Bareja, Victor Syntez, Steven Millstein, Antti Kettunen, Markus Hautala, Matti Timonen, Drummond Reed, John Jordan, Scott Perry, and Cristina Timón López. The survey data was collected between 24 March – and 30 April 2021. The survey link has been distributed to the members of the TrustOverIP Foundation and also to other opensource communities, such as MyData and Hyperledger. Furthermore, some authors shared the link via personal social media channels like LinkedIn. Finally, we distributed the survey link also at the Internet Identity Workshop XXXII in April 2021. Altogether, we received 79 complete responses, of which 50 respondents are members of the TrustOverIP Foundation. The state of Self-Sovereign Identity in spring 2021 7 Figure 1 presents the respondents’ countries. The top three countries of the survey respondents are U.S., Canada, and India. Figure 1. The country of the respondents The state of Self-Sovereign Identity in spring 2021 8 Most of the respondents are TrustOverIP Foundation members (63%), while many respondents are members of Sovrin, DIF, W3C, and MyData. Most respondents belong to multiple communities, and only 10,13% did not belong to any SSI-related communities. In Figure 2, the respondents’ role in the organization is presented. The survey respondents are mostly leaders and experts. Figure 2. Role of the respondent in their organization In Figure 3, the industry sectors of the respondents’ organizations are presented. Software and services are the most common industry where the respondents’ organizations belong. Figure 3. Industry sector of the respondent’s organizations The state of Self-Sovereign Identity in spring 2021 15 In this section, we asked the respondents to give an opinion on SSI's benefits and challenges. The questions were 5-point Likert scale questions with options between Strongly agree – Strongly disagree. The results are based on the mean values of the answers. We present the results in descending order. That is, most respondents have supported the first option. According to the respondents’ answers, SSI provides the following benefits for society: 1. Trustful, secure, and private digital interactions 2. Data owners’ possibility to control their data 3. Digital transformation 4. Global and interoperable identity 5. Financial inclusion According to the respondents’ answers, SSI provides the following benefits for the organization: 1. Innovations 2. Strategic alliances 3. Competitive advantage 4. Increasing our customer base 5. Simplifying processes According to the respondents’ answers, the key challenges in SSI are the following: 1. User experience 2. Immaturity of technology 3. Lack of interoperability and standards 4. Developing the governance rules and policies 5. Challenges of business model development The state of Self-Sovereign Identity in spring 2021 16 The authors thank the Self-Sovereign Identity expert community for answering the survey.