did:btc1 DID Method Specification

did:btc1 is a censorship resistant DID Method using the Bitcoin blockchain as a Verifiable Data Registry to announce changes to the DID document. It improves on prior work by allowing: zero-cost off-chain DID creation; aggregated updates for scalable on-chain update costs; long-term identifiers that can support frequent updates; private communication of the DID document; private DID resolution; and non-repudiation appropriate for serious contracts.

The full specification may be viewed at http://dcdpr.github.io/did-btc1/.

Compiling the Specification Locally

First, make sure you have 'pandoc' installed on your machine - https://pandoc.org/getting-started.html. Then you also need 'npm', a package manager for the JavaScript programming. Mac users can get both with homebrew: brew install npm pandoc

Then run:

• cd did-btc1
• npm install
• npm run pandoc-spec-local

The specification will be compiled and available in the _site/index.html file.

After editing the markdown files for the specification, see the chapters folder, you will need to rerun the script npm run pandoc-spec-local to see the changes.

Jupyter Notebooks

Included under the notebooks folder are a set of Jupyter notebooks that implement the various features of the did:btc1 specification. These are included as helpful reference material for those intending to implement the specification. To run the notebooks locally see the notebooks/README.md.