SAID — Self-Addressable Secured Future of Verifiable Data
Self-addressable data is a familiar idea. IPFS uses a hash of data as a data address. Addressable data is everywhere, from memory and filesystems to databases and blockchains. If we focus on structured data, we could make a step forward. VC has some obvious limitations and downsides — JSON-LD is too noisy for IOT devices and systems that require a compact data representation. CBOR-LD and JSON-LD-based credentials, even for the same data, will have different signatures, and it is no way to compare and compose this data together.
The solution to this problem is a serialization mechanism.
It focuses on data tuples (key values ) and has special cryptographic placeholders for a cryptographic digest of data. So cryptographic digest of data caller SAID - self-addressable id and serialized data with identifier inside form SAD — self-addressable data.
https://github.com/WebOfTrust/ietf-said
Now we have a crypto-powered lego-like building block of self-reference, Authentic data, or ADC — Authentic data containers. Now we have a composable, human-friendly, and machine-friendly solution. What kind of problem could it solve? JSON-LD is used to build data graphs and knowledge graphs; look at my video about VC
And an excellent explanation of JSON-LD ().
The problem with JSON-LD is that some critical data links are not an integral part of the data itself, like a link to a context or a revocation — it opens a potential vector for security attacks. SAID could be composed of a complex data graph that could hold an authentic reference to data and schema.
Another example is Verifiable presentation — with SAID, we could include VCs that could refer to each other and blindly confirm user binding and ownership. We could express a complex relationship between VCs
It is allowed to build complex data graphs like ACDC — Authentic Chained Data Container.
