Identity is the Key

I have worked in ZenGo, a crypto wallet company, for several years. My role was to explore and expand the boundaries of key management for wallets, that is, the custody, safe usage, and applications of permissionless, ledger-based, crypto-currencies. Recently, I started looking at the design principles of a somewhat related kind of system for self-sovereign identity, or as I will refer to it in this blog - decentralized identity (DID).
My initial instinct was to apply the familiar frameworks of crypto wallets, yet quickly I realized that there is much more to DID systems: despite similarities at the key management level, there are in addition many unique features to DID.
In this write-up, I will try to account for my humble journey going from a crypto wallet to a DID system, while uncovering some new, at least for me, research questions in DID.