DID method

Every decentralized identifier has the form did:method:identifier. The umbrella standard, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0, has been a W3C Recommendation since 19 July 2022 and sets the common syntax and data model. The DID method is the piece that fills in the how: a separate specification governing a concrete scheme and the four lifecycle operations, create, resolve, update and deactivate, over a given verifiable data registry such as a blockchain, the DNS plus web, or a database.

Resolving a DID means running the method's algorithm to obtain the DID document, which holds the public keys, verification methods, service endpoints and controller. The software that does this is a DID resolver or method driver. A point of rigor matters here: individual methods are not formal W3C standards. did:web is developed in the W3C Credentials Community Group and did:ethr is maintained by the Decentralized Identity Foundation; they are registered methods, not Recommendations. When DID Core was published in July 2022, well over a hundred method specifications were already registered.

The two most used methods show the design trade-off. did:ethr relies on the ERC-1056 registry on EVM chains: creating a DID is immediate and free, since it only needs an Ethereum address, but updating keys or attributes requires on-chain transactions. did:web uses the domain itself and HTTPS as its root of trust: did:web:example.com resolves to https://example.com/.well-known/did.json, offering trivial adoption in exchange for depending on domain control and server availability.