Working with DIDs

warning

This feature is currently in the experimental stage of development. Do not use it in production environments or presume it is secure. Expect breaking changes.

What is a DID

A Decentralized Identifier (DID) is an identifier that enables verifiable, decentralized digital identity. DIDs are designed to be decentralized, not requiring a specific identity provider or certificate authority. Developers may think of a DID as a secure pointer. Only the owner of the DID can change the data (DID documents) that it references. For more detailed information, see the W3C's documentation.

Resolving a DID

Resolving a DID means fetching the documents associated with a DID. The documents are returned in a single JSON object.

This example returns a Credential object that includes a schema in its didDocumentData:

$ ./kc resolve-did did:mdip:test:z3v8AuaYLYSWZJUa4bSadeoiNA3ps8dWDYtsmJNMDJhbFDjaKaX
{
    "@context": "https://w3id.org/did-resolution/v1",
    "didDocument": {
        "@context": [
            "https://www.w3.org/ns/did/v1"
        ],
        "id": "did:mdip:test:z3v8AuaYLYSWZJUa4bSadeoiNA3ps8dWDYtsmJNMDJhbFDjaKaX",
        "controller": "did:mdip:test:z3v8AuaaBKfwrt2Y7AAbDaGqLNgyn1BDhP7wUFpEMEngmwYwi17"
    },
    "didDocumentMetadata": {
        "created": "2024-03-21T20:26:01.826Z"
    },
    "didDocumentData": {
        "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#",
        "properties": {
            "account": {
                "format": "uri",
                "type": "string"
            },
            "service": {
                "type": "string"
            }
        },
        "required": [
            "service",
            "account"
        ],
        "type": "object"
    },
    "mdip": {
        "registry": "hyperswarm",
        "type": "asset",
        "version": 1
    }
}