Scalable, Flexible Infrastructure for Decentralized Identity
the DIF Steering Committee officially approved the first major release of the Sidetree Protocol specification, “v1” so to speak. This protocol has already been implemented, and four of its implementers have been collaborating intensively for over a year on expanding and extending this specification together.
What exactly is a “Sidetree”?
Sidetree is a protocol that extends “decentralized identifiers” (DIDs), one of the core building blocks of decentralized identity. Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) enable a person or entity to securely and directly “anchor” their data-sharing activities to a shared ledger, secured by cryptography. The first generation of DID systems accomplished this with a 1-to-1 relationship between “blockchain addresses” (cryptographic identities) and the more flexible, powerful addresses called DIDs. These latter functioned as privacy-preserving extensions of the blockchain addresses to which they were closely coupled. In this way, each DID effortlessly inherited the formidable security guarantees of those blockchains– but in many cases, they also inherited scalability problems and economic models that were a bad fit for many DID use-cases.
https://blog.identity.foundation/sidetree-protocol-reaches-v1/