DIDs and DIDComm
DIDs
DIDs, short for Decentralized identifiers, are a type of identifier that enables verifiable, decentralized identity. A DID can refer to any subject, a person, organization, etc. DIDs are decoupled from centralized registries, identity providers and certificate authorities.
DID Documents
A DID by itself does not contain a lot of information. So in order to get some metadata we have to resolve the DID to get a DID Document. With this document we can get data such as their public key, proof mechanisms and their service endpoints. This means that we can check the validity, encrypt one-to-one messages and send it to their service endpoint.
DIDComm
In the previous section sending a message to their service endpoint is mentioned. This is a nice feature, but is lacking a definition of how it should work. DIDComm, we will only discuss V1 here, defines this. DIDComm is designed to be private, secure, transport-agnostic, interoperable and much more. This means that you can securely send a message from as Alice to Bob securely via bluetooth, HTTP, WebSockets, etc.
When working with the tools available inside the Aries JavaScript ecosystem, deep knowledge of DIDComm is not required.