-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 116
Do we need 'actor' - 'agent' - 'party'? #467
New issue
Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.
By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.
Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account
Comments
Claims don't represent anything about the ability to reason, hold perceptions, etc. They represent statements made by an entity - the issuer, which can be held or presented by an entity, an entity can request a verification, etc. So the idea of a "party" as you describe it above is not actually necessary. (If it were, I would strongly suggest a different term, since a "party" in such a context would generally be what you describe as an "actor"). In each case, the relevant entity happens to be an actor in your terms (since it has acted). The situation where an "actor" is acting on behalf of a "party" (again, using your descriptions) but they are separate entities is described in the spec, as the case where a holder of a credential is not the subject of a credential. In principle it is possible to make other distinctions, such as the fact that a government department is (in common legal parlance) the party that issues a driver's license, but needs a specific agent to make the statements on its behalf. But it is not clear in practice that doing this serves any purpose. I suggest closing this issue, although a concrete case where the distinction has a practical import to implementing the specification would be grounds for reconsidering that. |
+1 for closing and picking up the thread in the CCG. |
In order to make VCs practicable, it will become necessary to clearly distinguish between:
Note that there is no predetermined relation between being an actor (or non-actor) and a party (or non-party), which implies that these notions are distinct, and should be used correctly (at least in a standard).
Here's one of several related issues: Claims represent parts of the K-ledge* (of parties, of course). Issuing a VC on the other hand can only be done by an actor. So:
I acknowledge that this is a difficult thing, not just to understand, but also - if we were to decide that such distinctions are needed - this would require a major rework of texts. This issue is related to other issues, e.g. #72, #80.
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: