Self Sovereign Digital Identity on the Blockchain: A Discourse Analysis

As a technology that can be traced back to the late 1990s in its structural fundamentals, ‘blockchain' came into mainstream public discourse as of 2017. Previously discussed in the fringes of the technology-savvy circles, blockchain has now became a global phenomenon and indeed an industry that is rapidly growing and capturing a notable share of the public imagination along with academic discourse. Blockchain's emergence in the realm of technology is essentially thanks to the invention of bitcoin as both a speculative asset and as a digital store of value. Many governments around the world have made public claims regarding their enthusiasm in adopting ‘blockchain' in various ways; varying from Russia, Estonia and Ukraine in Europe all the way to Venezuela in Latin America and even the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. This paper puts out the objective of achieving self-sovereign identities on the blockchain is a promise that has not yet manifested on the ground, albeit it disproportionately captures a significant share of the contemporary discourse on the three larger concepts of self-sovereignty, digital identity and the blockchain. A key reason for the lack of manifestation of this promise is that, there is little agreement as to what is actually meant by ‘self-sovereign identities' —in stark comparison to the major consensus over the concepts of ‘blockchain' or ‘cryptocurrencies'. In order to explore the genealogy of the core concept of ‘identity', the theoretical genesis of ‘biopolitics' is consulted, demonstrating that our contemporary technological epoch is best defined as an era of the emergence of ‘biodigital' power. The paper ultimately argues that the reason for this disproportional share of discourse is created by certain actors to utilise the growing rhetoric on ‘blockchain' and the libertarian notion of ‘self-sovereignty' as façades to potentially pursue biocapitalist objectives.