Data Protection Compliance Challenges for Self-sovereign Identity

Various identity management solutions are emerging in different jurisdictions, with the goal of creating a unified and privacy-preserving identity management system bridging the offline with the online. Within this trend, the concept of self-sovereign identity has re-emerged. It is a concept attached to expressions of both individual autonomy and individual control (sovereignty)—an aspiration in direct relation to what blockchain is promised to bring in contemporary discourse. The paper will provide an overview of the current self-sovereign identity paradigm solutions within the technological environment that involves decentralized networks and it will trace some of the challenges it faces within the European Union especially with regards to the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR).