Terminal 3 provides universal identities for both humans and AI agents based on W3C’s Decentralized Identifiers (DID) global standard specs.

What is a Decentralized Identifier (DID)?

DIDs are identifiers that enable verifiable, decentralized digital identities. A DID refers to any subject (e.g. a person, group, organization, abstract entity, etc.) as determined by the controller of the DID. Specifically, DIDs are URIs (unique digital addresses) that associate a DID subject with a DID document allowing trustable interactions associated with that subject. Similar to a URL, when you resolve a DID, you receive a DID document in JSON, JSON-LD, or similar format.

A simple DID example

A DID is a simple unique text string consisting of three parts:

the did URI scheme identifier;
the identifier for the DID method; and
the DID method-specific identifier.

The example DID above resolves to a DID document.

Multiple DIDs

A subject may have as many DIDs as they want for different use cases, such as:

a DID for educational certificates; or
a DID for verified identity / KYC documents; or
a DID for online gaming accounts.

What is a DID Document?

A DID document contains information associated with the DID, such as ways to cryptographically authenticate a DID controller.

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/did/v1",
    "https://w3id.org/security/suites/ed25519-2020/v1"
  ]
  "id": "did:example:123456789abcdefghi",
  "authentication": [{
    "id": "did:example:123456789abcdefghi#keys-1",
    "type": "Ed25519VerificationKey2020",
    "controller": "did:example:123456789abcdefghi",
    "publicKeyMultibase": "zH3C2AVvLMv6gmMNam3uVAjZpfkcJCwDwnZn6z3wXmqPV"
  }]
}

DID Methods

A DID method (and its spec) defines the precise operations by which DIDs and DID documents are created, resolved, updated, and deactivated. There are currently more than 150 DID methods out there, which can be categorized into 4 main types based on their storage method:

Centralized: relies on a Web2 server
Blockchain-based: the “original” DID method involving a blockchain
Hybrid: uses decentralized storage to store its documents
Static: no data registry is required; can be created and resolved by encoding/decoding data directly.

Terminal 3 currently provides a custom did:t3n DID.

	Centralized	Blockchain-based	Hybrid	Static
Privacy	low	high	high	medium
Self-Sovereign?	no	yes	yes	yes
Data Registry Required?	yes	yes	yes	no
(web2 server)	yes
(Blockchain)		yes	yes
(L2 storage)			yes
Decentralized?	no	yes	yes	yes
Complexity	simple	complex	medium	simple
Transaction Fee Required?	no	yes	yes	no
(when updating)			yes
Mutable?	yes	no	no	no
Supported Operations	create read update delete	create read update delete	create read update delete	create read
Example	did:web	did:ethr did:btcr did:dock	did:3 did:ion did:elem	did:key did:pkh

Terminal 3 Overview

Components

Decentralized ID (DID)

What is a Decentralized Identifier (DID)?

A simple DID example

Multiple DIDs

What is a DID Document?

DID Methods

DID System Architecture

Generic DID Architecture

​What is a Decentralized Identifier (DID)?

​A simple DID example

​Multiple DIDs

​What is a DID Document?

​DID Methods

​DID System Architecture

​Generic DID Architecture

What is a Decentralized Identifier (DID)?

A simple DID example

Multiple DIDs

What is a DID Document?

DID Methods

DID System Architecture

Generic DID Architecture