English

Towards a trustful digital world: exploring self-sovereign identity ecosystems

Computers and Society 2021-09-14 v3

Abstract

In the current global situation-burdened by, among others, a vast number of people without formal identification, digital leap, the need for health passports and contact tracking applications-providing private and secure digital identity for individuals, organizations and other entities is crucial. The emerging self-sovereign identity (SSI) solutions rely on distributed ledger technologies and verifiable credentials and have the potential to enable trustful digital interactions. In this human-centric paradigm, trust among actors can be established in a decentralized manner while the identity holders are able to own and control their confidential data. In this paper, we build on observations gathered in a field study to identify the building blocks, antecedents and possible outcomes of SSI ecosystems. We also showcase opportunities for researchers and practitioners to investigate this phenomenon from a wide range of domains and theories, such as the digital innovation ecosystems, value co-creation, surveillance theory, or entrepreneurship theories.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.15131,
  title  = {Towards a trustful digital world: exploring self-sovereign identity ecosystems},
  author = {Gabriella Laatikainen and Taija Kolehmainen and Mengcheng Li and Markus Hautala and Antti Kettunen and Pekka Abrahamsson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.15131},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

This is a preprint of an article published in the PACIS 2021 Proceedings. Recommended citation: Laatikainen, Gabriella; Kolehmainen, Taija; Li, Mengcheng; Hautala, Markus; Kettunen, Antti; and Abrahamsson, Pekka, "Towards a Trustful Digital World: Exploring Self-Sovereign Identity Ecosystems" (2021). PACIS 2021 Proceedings. 19. https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2021/19