We live in a world where data is everything. While advances in technology have made the management of data easier, they have also created a need for people to have digitized identities. Like a key to a person’s life, control of an identity may grant the user unfiltered access to private information. Identity fraud and theft are some of the most frequent crimes today, and it is due to the fact that we are still not entirely in control of our own identities. We are at the mercy of the centralized powers that control our information. HISTORY To understand why self-sovereign identity is necessary, we must understand how Identity has developed in recent history. We can separate it into 3 sections: Centralized Identity: In the 1900’s, certain organizations assigned identities. Even governments needed a way to assign identities to individuals for various reasons. Ex. Social security numbers were created as a way for the government to track lifetime earnings. The validation of IP Addresses and the distribution of domain names was also forms of centralized identities. Federated Identity: A single identity allows access to multiple sites. This type of identity faces the same problem of being controlled by an organization. […]