Increasing Long Term Stability of Relations Between Fediverse Identities using SSI

<p>We will demo two small prototypes that are aimed at showcasing that a combination of domain-based identities and self-sovereign identities may be useful to help increase long-term stability of relations within the fediverse - in case DNS-based redirect/move methods fail.</p> <p>The core idea is to work towards something we like to refer to as ‘cross-network coherence’ of open social web identity: representations that are comprised of elements from both DNS and DID:PLC which are <em>referencing each other</em>, thereby creating an identity object that allows us to combine the advantages of both worlds. In other words: DNS actors would be referencing DID:PLC identities and, in the opposite direction, DNS based actors would be referenced by entries in the DID document of that same DID:PLC ID.</p> <p>Demo Part 1: ’Native bridging’: a fork of https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon that replicates posts from actors on the instance (who decide to opt-in) to a repo on an ATproto PDS on the same host. In this case AP activities by actor @user@domain are copied to ATproto networks via a DID:PLC anchored identity @user.domain (instead of @user.domain.ap.brid.gy in case of bridgyfed). </p> <p>Demo Part 2: ‘Identity convergence’: a fork of https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon that allows to add references to DID:PLC identities to AP actors (via ‘alsoKnownAs’), which can then be used to increase long term persistence of following/following relations within the fediverse. This is work in progress and will be released by the end of December 2025.</p> <p>Code: https://github.com/msonnb/mastodon</p>