Decentralized identifiers

Today, most of us have more accounts with corresponding usernames and passwords than we can count. Online banking, shopping, streaming, and social media, among other things, require the user to authenticate, or prove, their identity to utilize the provided service. Keeping track of a multitude of accounts becomes burdensome, and many of us turn toward the usage of weak or recycled credentials that pose a security risk. On the other hand, to avoid said security risks, many of us trade our privacy for convenience and use social identities to log in, giving the companies that manage these identities the ability to track our behavior. © 1988-2012 IEEE.