Regulatory, economic, but also sociological drivers have recently led to an increased amount of discussions around the Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) framework. However, these often highlight certain aspects or problems of the framework, rather than looking at the framework holistically and at what it can solve.

With this short paper, we wish to inform you about (a) what the framework solves, (b) what its elements are, (c) how it relates to current regulatory discussions as well as (d) to other technological elements, like public key infrastructures and blockchain.

After reading this paper, you should be able to understand criticism towards the framework but also to productively discuss how it can be used to solve certain problems, which use-cases may be a good fit for it, and how current issues can be addressed.