Christopher Allen

(1)conflict with the best interests of an individual;
(2)take advantage of or otherwise exploit an individual;
(3)result in a disproportionate risk to an individual;
(4)are to an individual's detriment; or
(5)cause harm to an individual."

"**Duty of loyalty** The department, a digital wallet provider, a verifier, a relying party, and a digital guardian shall refrain from practices or activities related to the processing of an individual's identity attributes that: …

But it is the addition of "Duty of Loyalty", which like Wyoming's "Principal Authority" evokes agency law, which as I understand it (but IANAL) makes it hard to use contract law to abrogate these duties…

👍 The new Utah #SEDI draft SB0275 has the essence of my first #SSI principle that I wrote 10 years ago:

"(1) An individual possesses an individual identity innate to the individual's existence and independent of the state, which identity is fundamental and inalienable."
le.utah.gov/~2026/bills/...

Announcing the 10-Year SSI Revision Project In 2016, I published The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity and with it proposed ten foundational principles for digital identity systems. These principles...

Next year it’ll be 10 years since @christophera.bsky.social wrote The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity along with a definition and 10 principles of SSI.

A group is now being convened to refine these principles. Hope to see some atproto folks get involved here, including @bnewbold.net & co.

Sponsor @BlockchainCommons on GitHub Sponsors Blockchain Commons is a "not-for-profit" social benefit corporation committed to open source , advocating for the creation of open, interoperable, secure & compassionate digital infrastructure to e...

Support our work to create infrastructure that can't be taken from us. Become a GitHub Sponsor of Blockchain Commons. Help us build autonomous infrastructure for coordination, collaboration, and identity beyond Bitcoin. [19/19] github.com/sponsors/Blo...

These aren't Bitcoin-specific features. They're the architecture of autonomy itself. QR codes, Bluetooth, threshold signatures, Gordian Envelope, XIDs. Technologies that enable Exodus Protocols for coordination, identity, and collaboration beyond value transfer. [18/19]

A journalist stores sources in a Gordian Club. One permit for their key, SSKR shares to their editors. Even if seized, encrypted information is protected. A protest group coordinates when messaging app becomes surveillance. Immigrants have credentials with no phone-home. [17/19]

Gordian Clubs use a permit system where different people access the same content different ways: private keys, XIDs, or secret shares. Multiple permits mean resilience. Transport neutral: internet, thumb drive, QR code in a newspaper, even @Blockstream Satellite. [16/19]

Musings of a Trust Architect: The Gordian Club ABSTRACT: Unencrypted data isn’t safe. Centralized servers aren’t reliable. Gordian Club offer an alternative: the autonomous cryptographic object (ACO). Self-contained objects protected by cryptograp...

Gordian Clubs shows these principles: an “Exodus Protocol” built on Autonomous Cryptographic Objects—self-contained, cryptographically secure, resilient when infrastructure fails. Unencrypted data isn’t safe; centralized servers aren’t reliable. [15/19] www.blockchaincommons.com/musings/musi...

Principle 5: work offline and across time. Bitcoin transactions can be signed offline and broadcast later. The protocol doesn't care about internet connectivity for core operations. True autonomy works with whatever channels remain available when coercion denies others. [14/19]

Principle 4: preserve exit through portability. Bitcoin keys work in any wallet. Open protocol means freedom to switch implementations. Without the ability to walk away, consent collapses into coercion. Lock-in is the opposite of sovereignty. [13/19]

Principle 3: make constraints load-bearing. Bitcoin can’t reverse transactions, so your funds can’t be seized by fiat. Rule changes require consensus, so your holdings can’t be inflated away. What can’t be changed can’t be weaponized. [12/19]

Principle 2: encode rules in mathematics, not policy. Math doesn’t discriminate, take sides, or change under pressure. Cryptographic proof replaces administrative decision-making: verification is deterministic. Code can be coerced, but mathematics cannot. [11/19]

Principle 1: operate without external dependencies. If it requires permission to operate, it's not autonomous. If it stops working when a company fails or a government objects, it's infrastructure built on sand. We need self-contained cryptographic objects. [10/19]

Musings of a Trust Architect: The Exodus Protocol ABSTRACT: Digital infrastructure is built on sand due to its control by centralized entities, most of which are focused on profit over service. We need Exodus Protocol services that build infrastructu...

In my new Musings article, I lay out five principles required to build Exodus Protocols. They define what makes infrastructure truly autonomous and resilient against centralized control or sudden disappearance. [9/19] www.blockchaincommons.com/musings/musi...

Unfortunately Bitcoin only creates an Exodus Protocol for value transfer. We need the same architectural patterns for coordination, collaboration, and identity. We need to protect activists, empower journalists, enable disaster response, preserve long-term archives. [8/19]

Bitcoin is an Exodus Protocol: a system that frees us from external control by creating infrastructure without infrastructure. Miners can come and go. Transactions can be signed air-gapped and transferred using QR codes. It's generally hard to censor, unthinkable to kill. [7/19]

Bitcoin demonstrated something profound: fundamental capabilities can exist as mathematical rights rather than centralized privileges. When your ability to transact depends on a bank's approval, it's not a right but permission. Bitcoin restored transaction as a right. [6/19]

So how do we create digital infrastructure that can't be taken from us? Bitcoin answered that question. For fifteen years it has demonstrated autonomous infrastructure that works. No servers to shut down, no administrators to pressure, no companies whose failure matters. [5/19]

By now everyone has a story of infrastructural loss. Google Plus circles. Internet radio. MP3s. This pattern has a name: #enshittification. A service becomes essential, companies collect rent, reduce features, increase surveillance, then kill it when profits fade. [4/19]

Advocacy and activist groups blockaded by Visa, Mastercard, or PayPal without charge or trial. Platforms locking out regions citing “legal risk.” Canadian truckers with frozen accounts, professionals losing workspaces overnight. Access became permission. [3/19]

A decade ago my students lost their collaborative learning infrastructure overnight when Yahoo sold del.icio.us and Google killed Reader. No warning. No migration. Gone. A story of the systematic transformation of rights into revokable privileges. [2/19]

What would it mean to build infrastructure that can’t fail you? Not one that never has problems, but where someone else can't make it unavailable to you? Where fundamental capabilities exist as rights, not revokable privileges? For this, we need “Exodus Protocols” 🧵… [1/19]

And talk to me directly if you'd like to work with us on Gordian Clubs, Hubert, Provenance Marks, or any of the rest of our Gordian autonomy technology stack! [13/13]

Sponsor @BlockchainCommons on GitHub Sponsors Blockchain Commons is a "not-for-profit" social benefit corporation committed to open source , advocating for the creation of open, interoperable, secure & compassionate digital infrastructure to e...

Support Blockchain Commons and this work by becoming a financial sponsor. [12/13] github.com/sponsors/Blo...

2025 Q3 Blockchain Commons Report It has been both an innovative and busy quarter at Blockchain Commons. Here’s some of the main things that we worked on this summer: Join the Club: Introducing the Gordian Club Th...

All of that and more is detailed in the newest quarterly report from @blockchaincomns. [11/13] www.blockchaincommons.com/quarterlies/...

GitHub - BlockchainCommons/frost-verify-rust: A standalone command-line tool for verifying FROST signatures and generating test data for verification testing. A standalone command-line tool for verifying FROST signatures and generating test data for verification testing. - BlockchainCommons/frost-verify-rust

You also might want to take a look at our frost-verify tool for checking FROST signatures (specialized for ZF FROST signing). [10/13] github.com/BlockchainCo...

We'll have more on this in a Learning FROST from the Command Line course that we started work on this quarter and will finish up this fall. [9/13] github.com/BlockchainCo...

Gordian Developer Meeting: August 2025 Docs & information on Blockchain Commons specifications.

Finally, we made some real progress on FROST work funded by @HRF. If you want to send Bitcoins with a FROST signature, you now can! [8/13] developer.blockchaincommons.com/meetings/202...