February, 2021

Welcome to the 2021 February issue of DIF Monthly, the monthly newsletter of Decentralized Identity Foundation! Read below for the latest updates on the work of the decentralized identity community every month.

Foundation News

DIF F2F Virtual

DIF held its semiannual “Face-to-Face” community’ event in January, and man, what an event it was! For obvious reasons, it was virtual for the second time, and for the first time, it spanned both Zoom and the interactive social platform gather.town, giving a more intimate atmosphere and allowing for more organic networking than often happens at “teleconferences.” If you missed it in part or in full, you can find high-level summaries and recordings of the main events on our blog.

New work items in DIF:
DIDcomm Bluetooth work item officially kicks off under DIDcomm WG

  • a specification that describes general-purpose discovery and transport mechanics over Bluetooth for DIDcomm

VC Marketplace work item kicks off under CC WG:

  • to establish the reference architecture for a Verifiable Credentials Marketplace,

Credential Manifest work item rebooted under CC WG:

  • the format that normalizes the explicit definition of issuance requirements and contents to unknown recipients and verifiers

Wallet Security Working Group (preapproved)
The WG will design and define secure wallet architecture, establish common terminology, produce guidelines, classify and specify security capabilities and best practices, and more.
If you are interested to learn more about the group, join the mailing list

🛠️ Working Group Updates

☂️ InterOp WG (cross-community)

Recommendations, education materials, and test suites for interoperability across all adjacent communities working on decentralized identities.

Chairs: Pamela Dingle, Kaliya Young, Juan Caballero
Page : <interop>

  • Microsoft Authenticator OIDC JWT/VP/VC functionality presentation (not a demo) and discussion around consent.
  • Year in Review session - Report-out, goals, and roadmap.
  • Kaliya’s new paper - scene by scene review.
  • Veramo intro - modular JavaScript framework for verifiable data.

Identifiers & Discovery

How people, organizations, and devices can be identified and located without centralized systems.

Chairs: Markus Sabadello & Sam Smith
Page: <ID WG>

  • New .NET implementation of “common library” toolkit.
  • Goal to create a WG-specific work item proposal/approval process.
  • Tomislav Markovski (Streetcred) donated DID:key implementation in RUST.
  • Current work items:
  • Discussion on did:peer’s status.
  • KERI implementations are moving ahead.
  • Work on Universal Registrar and Agent Framework DID Drivers
  • DID syntax discussion.

🛡️ Claims & Credentials

Verifying claims and assertions of identities.

Chairs: Martin Riedel, Wayne Chang & Gabe Cohen Reynolds
Page: <CC WG>

  • Accepted work items:
  • Credential Manifest - work item: Presentation Exchange meetings will be at least 51% devoted to Credential Manifest specification iterations from now on.
  • VC Marketplace - work item.
  • Presentation Exchange, nearing 0.1.0 release any day now!
  • Aries RFCs and their Integration of PE and CM specifications.
  • Aries-GO plans full support of BBS+ and PE and the end of Q1/2021.
  • Spherity presentation for an LDAP legacy-revocation status check work item.

DID Auth

DID-based authentication specs, standards, and libraries.

Chairs: Kyle den Hartog & Oliver Terbu
Page: <DIDAuth>

  • Asia-specific A/B connect WG calls at OIDF.
  • OIDF Meeting after F2F.
  • Kristina presented at F2F about the effort OIDF will do on SIOP.

Sidetree

The development and maintenance of the formal Sidetree specification,

Chairs: Troy Ronda & Daniel Buchner
Page: <sidetree>

DID Comm

Specifications, protocols, and formats developed for authentication data structures.

Chairs: Sam Curren, Oliver Terbu & Tobias Looker
Page: <DIDComm>

  • DID-core use cases added.
  • PR/Issues:
  • 128 - to header semantics.
  • 134 - reply_* headers and the support of DIDs without endpoints.
  • 135 - Size (byte length) Specification for DIDComm Messages.
  • 140 - Anonymous From.
  • 141 - expires_time semantics.
  • Support for DID Methods without endpoint support.
  • DIDComm Bluetooth discussion.
  • ACK - inclusion, and status.
  • Jolocom demo and Rust core library donated to the group.

Secure Data Storage

Create one or more specifications to establish a foundational layer for secure data storage.

Chairs: Kaliya Young, Tobias Looker & Dmitri Zagidulin
Page: <SDS>

  • The main work item still Confidential Data Store Specification (iterating the EDV spec in dialogue with adjacent protocols and specific use-cases)
  • Granular discussions on metadata, identifiers, and indices
  • Discussion on example capabilities for operations, authorization model, and replication modes to target.

🦄 Member Updates

DIF members are encouraged to share tech-related news in this section. For more info, get in touch with operations.


Condatis

  • Getting Started with Self-Sovereign Identity SSI
    Webinar | Multiple dates
    In this webinar series, Condatis experts in decentralized identity focus on SSI use cases and solutions to real business problems. Join our upcoming webinar on 17 February at 3 pm GMT.


Jolocom

  • Jolocom has been working on a Rust implementation of DIDComm v2 – check out the library on their GitHub.
  • The Identity Working Group at INATBA recently published a position paper on decentralized identity written by practitioners from the community with Jolocom’s Kai Wagner as lead author.

Funding

eSSIF LAB (EU) - Infrastructure-Oriented call

  • Infrastructure-Oriented open Call, with grants of up to 155 000 € (9 months projects).
  • The call is open to European innovators and focuses on the development and interop testing of open-source SSI components.
  • Some examples of SSI components include Wallets, server proxies, revocation, cryptographic enforcer policies, integration, interoperability, compatibility, just to name a few.
  • Please note the final-round deadline: ** 30 June 2021, 13:00 CET** (Brussels local time).
  • Apply here

NGI Open Calls (EU)

  • Funding is allocated to projects using short research cycles targeting the most promising ideas. Each of the selected projects pursues its own objectives, while the NGI RIAs provide the program logic and vision, technical support, coaching and mentoring, to ensure that projects contribute towards a significant advancement of research and innovation in the NGI initiative.
  • The focus is on advanced concepts and technologies that link to relevant use cases, and that can have an impact on the market and society overall. Applications and services that innovate without a research component are not covered by this model.
  • Varying amounts of funding
  • Learn more here.

🖋️ DIF Media

Trinsic donates did-key.rs to I&D WG
by Decentralized Identity Foundation | Medium

“The newest donation to the I&D WG archive is an implementation of did:key built in the Rust language by long-time active DIF members, Trinsic. In addition to being great news for the I&D WG itself, it is also great news for the “target audience” of the WG: developers trying to smoothly and efficiently extend the domain of DID-based systems to new programming languages, use cases, and contexts.”

DIF Face to Face Jan 2021 Highlights
by Decentralized Identity Foundation | Medium

“DIF held its semiannual “Face-to-Face” community’ event this week, and man, what an event it was! For obvious reasons, it was virtual for the second time, and for the first time, it spanned both Zoom and the interactive social platform gather.town giving a more intimate atmosphere and allowing for more organic networking than often happens at “teleconferences.” If you missed it in part or in full, you’d find below summaries and recordings of the main events.”

Community updates

INATBA Identity Working Group Publishes Position Paper on Decentralised Identity
This position paper introduces a scenario-based approach to depict possible futures of digital identity to contribute to the important debate on how to best govern the new, highly disruptive approach to digital identity: self-sovereign identity.
You can read it here.

Jobs

Members of the Decentralized Identity Foundation are looking for:

  • Backend Engineers,
  • Frontend Engineers,
  • Head of Mobile Development
    … and many more!

Check out the available positions here.

Metrics

Medium:
1.3k followers | 4.054 minutes read
Twitter:
4.048 followers | 9k tweet impressions | 1.824 profile visits
identity.foundation:
16.041 unique visitors

In the last 30 days.

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