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I would say that identity is about building up a reputation, and does not need to be undersigned or issued by the state or a centralized third party.
Memdeklaro is meant to be a philosophical alternative to the state's strict monopoly on identity. Currently, if the state refuses to print a birth certificate or passport for someone, there are no alternative identity issuers (Nansen Passports are no longer issued, Flag Theory requires an existing passport). It wasn't that bad 10-20 years ago, when it was easier to survive on a cash-in-hand basis, but nowadays ID requirements are getting stricter. People are rightfully opposing Digital ID, but the state is already using physical birth certificates and passports as tools of surveillance and censorship.
About third party verification - for most of human history, you were who you said you were. You could move a few towns over, self-declare your name, and build a reputation for yourself. No one asked the priest or the king to verify if John Smith was really John Smith. The local church recorded births, marriages and deaths, but people didn't need to show a stamped certificate in order to find work or housing. People arriving at Ellis Island often chose a new name for themselves, either to escape persecution or simply start a new life. Passports didn't exist until the 20th century and many ID requirements only came into force within the past 2 decades.
English Common Law still has freedom of name - people just need to print and sign a deed poll document at home, and they can legally use their chosen name. In the US, many states grant name changes by court order. Under these jurisdictions, your name is your choice, not the choice of state bureaucrats (or birth parents). Unfortunately many European countries restrict or deny name changes, regardless of reason.
And the internet has been operating on the basis of self-declared identities since the 1990s. PGP, Bitcoin and Nostr keys are essentially random numbers, and any extra metadata (name, actions, reputation) is self-declared.
(Sorry for the text wall. If you're interested in more information, check the Further Reading part of the Memdeklaro homepage.)
This is an interesting form of protest. The point of a self-originating ID is to avoid third party verification but the main use of ID is third party verification (aside from medical IDs - so folks know who you are if you're unconscious), right?