This post initiates a series of posts dedicated to decentralised models, solutions and designs for persistent data identification in FAIR Science. This first one in the series examines the potential and pitfalls of decentralised technologies for persistent identification and data management. It evaluates the current PID systems, such as DOI, ORCID, and ROR, which depend on social and technical mechanisms to map and resolve the metadata records consistently. It then presents a new ecosystem of persistent identification approaches that harness the benefits of decentralised web architectures, such as IPFS, IPLD, blockchain, DIDs, and Sidetree. It shows how content-addressable networks, cryptographic hash functions, and verifiable digital identities can enable reliable and long-term data availability and access. It also explores how open, distributed, and verifiable algorithms, protocols, and software can support interoperability, reproducibility, and provenance of data and metadata.