did:git

A Decentralized Identifier (DID) method for the Git protocol.

Vision and Architecture

The did:git method is designed with a layered architecture:

1. Base did:git: Provides decentralized identifiers and verifiable history purely through the Git protocol, utilizing PGP/SSH commit signatures to build DID Documents.
2. Permissive Commons Profile: A specialized extension of did:git designed to strip "digital slavery" out of the commons informatics supply chain by embedding licensing and financial obligations into the version control workflow.

The Permissive Commons Profile

While gitmark is optional for the base DID method, the Permissive Commons profile requires gitmark (https://git-mark.com/):

• Content may be provided under licenses that assert an initial "obligation cost".
• Users can contribute towards paying down these obligation costs.
• gitmark is used to immutably track these contributions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
• Once obligations are fully extinguished (compensated), the work automatically transitions to being freely available without further payment.
• The method also supports fee-less shared resources for purely personal or group collaboration where no payment obligation exists.
• Encrypted Private Commons: Support for private shared resources (e.g., personal relationship logs). Access and payload encryption are restricted exclusively to authorized did:git identified users by leveraging the SSH and PGP keys declared in their DID Documents.
• Nym Mixnet Integration: Network-level privacy and transport anonymization is supported by routing Git operations over the Nym mixnet, hiding IP addresses and relationship metadata from centralized hosts.

Interactive Playground

We have built an interactive Web Application to help you understand how Git History natively powers W3C Decentralized Identifiers.

👉 Try the did:git Playground!

Specification

The DID specification is actively being developed. See index.html for the ReSpec document detailing the method, resolution, and security considerations.

Core Libraries (did-git-rs & did-git-ts)

This repository contains robust reference implementations for did:git in both Rust (did-git-rs) and TypeScript/Node.js (did-git-ts).

TypeScript / Node.js (did-git-ts)

The did-git-ts library natively interacts with the host's git binary to resolve decentralized identifiers directly within JavaScript applications, making it perfectly suited for web wallets and credential verification services.

Rust (did-git-rs)

A high-performance Rust library leveraging git2 for embedded systems and backend resolvers.

Shared Capabilities:

• Create: Initialize a repository and establish the genesis DID state.
• Update: Commit changes and sign with configured PGP/SSH keys.
• Resolve: Extract DID Document state dynamically from git commit history and metadata.
• Deactivate: Tombstone a repository identity.
• Obligations: Parse and evaluate obligation states (permissive commons transition logic).
• Anchoring: Native wrappers around gitmark to anchor commits to the Bitcoin blockchain.

Getting Started

(Work In Progress: Setup instructions for did-git-rs will be provided once the crate is initialized).

W3C DID Registry

The docs/ folder in this repository contains the proposed entry and submission guide for the W3C DID Spec Registries. See docs/submission_guide.md for instructions.