An analysis of digital identity management systems - a two-mapping view

Digital identity is essential to almost all information systems. This paper provides a new perspective for reducing digital identity management systems (DIMS) to two mappings, the core operations on the mappings, and the trust model built around the mappings. Using this two-mapping view, we derive criteria for determining whether a DIMS solution is self-sovereign. We also compare decentralized identity management solutions with the traditional centralized identity management solutions. From the comparison and analysis, we have the following findings. The differences between decentralized and centralized solutions stem from the trust model differences which dictate storage scheme differences, and therefore other operation-level differences. With a more trustless trust model and storage scheme, current decentralized solutions can be promising candidates for self-sovereign DIMS. Design considerations and certain limitations of the current decentralized solutions are analyzed based on the two-mapping view as well, which can provide useful directions to further study.