DID Authentication

DID Authentication allows two parties to establish a secure communication between each other directly, with no third party federation getting involved. The first step is for the user to ask for permission to authenticate to the relying party. This is done typically by user clicking a button from the relying party website or any agent form. The relying party in turn generate a challenge, typically a jwt token made from its DID, a request saying to share the user's DID, and some random string. Most of the time, this is done by the relying party generating a QR code, made up of the jwt and a callback url that will be accessed by the user. User then usually open its digital wallet to take a picture of the QR code to receive it.

The user receiving the challenge validates the token message by resolving the relying party's DID Document from a Universal Resolver and then using the public key inside the DID Document to verify the signature of the jwt token. Upon verification, user shares its DID Document to the relying party. The relying party does the same process, validating the signature of the message using the user's DID. From here, the relying party would now send a token to the user which will be used to secure the communication between them.

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