Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) originally started as a grassroots project, based on the fundamental idea that a decentralized stack must start with decentralized identifiers. By now, DIDs have become a W3C standard and are being adopted by a multitude of protocols and use cases around the world. DIDs are identifiers that are designed to be decentralized, peristent, resolvable, and cryptographically verifiable. They can be created, resolved, updated, and deactivated without any dependency on a central authority or intermediary. Since DIDs are "controlled" by cryptographic keys, they enable a Decentralized Public Key Infrastructure (DPKI) that provides the foundation for trustable interactions, authentication, messaging, and data sharing.

On one hand, DIDs are being used by rather traditional government-led initiatives such as Digital Identity Wallets, Digital Product Passports, Data Spaces, etc. On the other hand, DIDs also align nicely with many ideas and technical building blocks in the DWeb community, such as the Fediverse, decentralized social networking, local-first architectures, etc.

In this workshop, we will spend the first 10-15 minutes giving an introduction to DIDs and an overview of current developments in the DID community, including at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF).

Potential topics:
- What are DIDs? (Technical background, history, community).
- DID methods
- DID document data model
- DID URLs and DID parameters
- Current status of the W3C DID Working Group
- Current status of the DIF DID Methods Working Group
- DID Rubric
- DID Traits
- DIDs and other identifiers such as domain names
- DIDs and other protocols such as ActivityPub, Matrix, Solid
- Related technologies, such as Verifiable Credentials, DIDComm, OID4VC
- DIDs in applications such as digital identity wallets, AI agents, local-first architectures, digital product passports

After an initial introduction, we will spend the rest of the workshop in a flexible way depending on the interests of the participants. Activities can include:

• Technical deep dives on specific DID-related questions and topics that you can bring to the workshop! For example: What are the most important DID methods? What are DID URLs?
• Designing how DIDs can be integrated into a specific (your own?) protocol.
• Philosophical/political discussions. For example: Are DIDs really decentralized? Do DIDs really enable self-sovereign identity?

Any topics and discussions related to DIDs are welcome!