Who verifies the verifier? The new trust problem in digital identity

Homepage > News > Business > Who verifies the verifier? The new trust problem in digital identity TL;DR: Cryptographic credentials can prove who issued an identity claim and whether it has been altered. However, they do not eliminate trust. Instead, they shift trust upstream to issuers, keys, revocation systems, and the infrastructure that determines which authorities to trust. Key Takeaways: Cryptographic verification proves credential provenance and integrity, not whether an issuer should be trusted. Digital identity depends on trusted issuers, secure keys, status systems, and registries. A key compromise can undermine credentials that appear to be cryptographically valid. Revocation makes digital identity a live-state problem instead of a one-time signature check. Public blockchains can provide shared, tamper-proof infrastructure, enabling issuers, keys, and other credential information to be independently verified. Digital identity is changing. More specifically, it’s moving from recognition toward proof. Instead of uploading a photograph of a driver’s license or passport and letting software determine whether it’s genuine, cryptographically verifiable credentials enab...