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The Web of Trust model is designed to allow multiple entities to validate and sign certificates for one another. This decentralized approach means that trust is not vested in a single authority; instead, each participant in the network can serve as both a certificate holder and a certifier.

In this model, individuals can sign each other’s keys, establishing a web of trust relationships based on personal judgments or experiences rather than relying on a hierarchical chain of trust. Each participant in the Web of Trust is responsible for determining whether to trust the certificates signed by others, promoting a more community-driven validation process. This is especially useful in environments like PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), where users need a way to authenticate each other's public keys without relying solely on a central certificate authority.

The hierarchical trust model, on the other hand, relies on a single chain of trust where a root CA delegates authority to subordinate CAs. The single authority system inherently restricts certificate signing to one entity, and a chain of trust refers to a linear sequence of trust where each party must trust the one directly above it in the hierarchy. These models do not accommodate the same level of mutual validation among numerous independent entities as the Web of Trust does.