Self-sovereign identity as the basis for digital asset management in the Web3 environment

Анотація

The rapid development of decentralized technologies and blockchain is transforming the methods of authentication, data management and the implementation of digital human rights, which actualizes the need to form a new identity paradigm based on user autonomy and trustful interaction without intermediaries. The purpose of this article is to substantiate self-sovereign identity as the foundation of trust and digital asset management within the Web3 ecosystem. The research methodology combines comparative legal and formal-dogmatic analysis, structural-functional modeling of the three-way interaction among issuer, holder, and verifier, as well as a problem-oriented review of the technical standards and practices of early platforms (Sovrin, uPort). It is demonstrated that the emergence of self-sovereign identity is a natural response to the shortcomings of centralized and federated identification models in Web 2.0 (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect): dependence on providers, concentration of leakage risks, and inability to disclose attributes selectively. The article reveals the mechanism of trust formation in the self-sovereign identity system, which is based on a three-party model of interaction between the issuer, the holder and the verifier; in this model, data authenticity is ensured using cryptographic verifiability through decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials, which allows minimizing the participation of intermediaries, reducing the surface of possible attacks and guaranteeing the autonomy of the data subject in the process of managing their own digital identity. The key principles of self-sovereign identity (control, availability, transparency, minimization of disclosure, portability, security/resilience, and consent) are systematized, and their applied role in forming a «trust architecture» in Web3 (DAO, DeFi, NFT) is demonstrated. The study revealed a regulatory asymmetry between the technological development of self-sovereign identity systems and the level of their legal regulation. For Ukraine, key regulatory gaps have been specified that hinder the implementation of self-sovereign identity systems and limit the possibility of integrating Ukrainian e-government systems into the international Web3 space: the legislation lacks definitions of the terms «self-sovereign identity» and «decentralized identifier», which is why these concepts have no legal status in Ukraine; the current legal framework for electronic identification and personal data protection is incompatible with the principles of decentralization, self-control, and minimization of information disclosure, which underlie the SSI model. The practical significance of the results lies in the proposed holistic legal and technical framework for developing Web3 trust services, which enables the design of interoperable and secure processes for managing digital assets, prioritizing personal sovereignty over data.