🚀DIF Monthly #17 (April, 2021)

· 7 min read
🚀DIF Monthly #17 (April, 2021)

📯 Sidetree has reached v1, lots of groups are preparing sessions and demos for IIW (see below for DIF coupon!), Steering Committee elections are just around the corner, a whole hackathon kicked off organized by a member organization and devoted in large part to building on DIF specs and libraries, and work continues apace!

Table of contents

  1. Group Updates; 2. Member Updates; 3. Funding; 4. DIF Media; 5. Community; 6. Jobs; 7. Metrics; 8. Join DIF

🚀 Foundation News

Register for the upcoming IIW now!

  • Use the coupon code DIF_XXXII_20 to get 20% off your ticket(s)!

Steering Committee Elections are just around the corner!

We made a quick explainer on our blog to clear up the procedure in anticipation of next month's elections.

🛠️ Group Updates

☂️ InterOp WG (cross-community)

  • Justin Richter & Adrian Gropper on newest GNAP core spec
    • GNAP = Grant Negotiation and Authorization Protocol
    • Defines a mechanism for delegating authorization to a piece of software, and conveying that delegation to the software. This delegation can include access to a set of APIs as well as information passed directly to the software.
  • Discussion on Micro-Grant/Implementation-Bounty setting by DIF for the community (ideation and planning).
  • Machine readable governance framework straw man (Telegramsam), Trust frameworks at ToiP (Sankarshan).
  • Stephen Curran gave a tour of the recently-launched cross-agent Aries test harness, and an overview of the interop landscape of Aries, the different profiles, and the Code With Us grant program to bring us closer to more full-featured interoperability with the non-Aries world.
  • Anil John and some SVIP cohort members gave a Plugathon Report-out focusing specifically on the open-sourced conformance testing aspect of the program: Slides and demos from the event, the W3C-CCG VC-HTTP-API specification, and the updated W3C-CCG/Digital Bazaar CHAPI Test Suite.
  • In other interop news from the broader community, there was also an Interop Testing Survey to gauge interest and motivation to advance DIF Member Gataca's Verifier Universal Interface and a video Guided tour of DIF member iGrant.io’s Aries Testing Journey and their open-sourced Aries Interop Playground (both done through the interop program of ESSIF-LAB).

💡 Identifiers & Discovery

  • Discussion on multisig and delegation in DID methods and verification methods:
  • New did:solid method (but not related to Solid) by DIF members Civic
    • Discussion of the mechanics of the Solana blockchain, which the method utilizes.
    • Member-run universal resolver.
  • Universal Registrar discussion.
  • DID WG: Timeline and what the current "CR" state means.
    • Review and discussion of DID WG test suite
    • Policies of DID Method Registry from last few DID-WG topic calls.

🛡️ Claims & Credentials

  • Presentation Exchange reached v1.0.0 status.
    • It is now an officialy DIF Ratified Specification
  • Work and discussion on current Credential Manifest and VC Marketplace items.
    • Credential Manifest - how issuers differ from verifiers in their publication needs and mechanisms
      • Should CM support to output multiple credentials?
    • VC Marketplace - VC business-model/marketplace-use-case sandbox/discussion group. Detailed discussions not just about payment and incentivization but also discovery mechanisms, semantic definition/propagation, and other ecosystem-scale design issues
      • the group is moving its materials into Spec-up format and editing them in a spec-ward direction
      • adding more Use-case categories to their already extensive list
  • Discussing the current status of the LDAP VC-Revocation mechanism proposed by Spherity (Germany) and AutoSeg (Brasil) as a VC data model extension.
  • Quick overview of UVI (Essif-lab), an extension of the VC-HTTP-API to help discovery and verification from a VC verifier's point of view.

🔓 DID Auth

  • DIF-OIDF joint meetings - follow along on the bitbucket issues if the timing doesn't work for you!
  • On 29th April SIOP/DIF will be represented by Kristina at the OIDF workshop.

📻 DID Comm

  • Recently merged issues
    • the long discussed 157 - JSON-LD Context
    • 167 - property to accept media type
    • 171 - media type discussion
    • 166 - to support Curve P-384
  • Repository restructure to fix image display in the spec - 170
    • DIF Blog post on how to use Spec-Up coming soon!
  • Still open issues
  • Revisited issues
    • 165 - cty of JWM
    • 162 - Rewrapping forwarded messages. - awaiting PR
  • Peer DID Method 2 produced some good questions and was eventually merged - pull 26

📦 Secure Data Storage

  • Secure Data Storage Features:
    • EDV Client Features.
    • EDV Server Features.
    • HUB Features.
    • Decentralized Twitter (Dewitter) Requirements List:
      • Assumptions, Principles, Requirements, and Other Considerations.
  • Confidential Storage Specification Refactoring

🔧 KERI

  • Steady improvement and extension of the Q&A document keeps going in parallel to the spec/whitepaper and the implementations
  • KERI is moving from a first-cut "promiscuous mode" proof of concept to the next stage of development: securing an internal interface for local events to protect a controller's authoritative key event log from contamination by potentially malicious external events and receipts.
    • This entails designing a query mechanism for communicating requests for key events that manages the multisig escrow and the duplicity-detection log key
  • Threads to follow on github:
    • Query Mode discussion (a whopper!)
    • roadmapping thread thread
    • A conceptual/mental-model alignment thread on how the concept of the transaction-event log "TEL" is evolving as KERI gets more complex and starts layering on security, duplicity/corruption-detection, multi-sig, etc.

⚙️ Product Managers

  • Discussion on Wallet Security WG:
  • Product intros: GlobalID, Serto.
  • DHS SVIP Interoperability update: Deck, Transmute post.

🪙 Finance & Banking SIG

  • Alex David, Global Business Development Manager @ Raon gave a presentation followed by discussion during the last meeting

🏥 Healthcare SIG

  • Meetings will resume after IIW with a recap of relevant demos and sessions

📋 Additional Agenda Items

  • Wallet Security - soon to be a WG now that chairs have committed to lead the group!
  • Hospitality & Travel SIG still chartering and holding exploratory meetings to tease technical requirements out of use cases founding members have been working on.
  • Documentation Corps. started their work to create a FAQ page for the decentralized identity space.

🦄 Member Updates

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

  • Condatis

    • External Identities at Microsoft Ignite: Condatis roundup. This blog focuses on specific advances within the world of digital identity that our customers and readers will find helpful.
  • Affinidi is hosting their first ever virtual hackathon on the topic of Verifiable Credentials. They are inviting developers to leverage open source technologies (mostly developed and/or managed in DIF!) and Affinidi’s SDKs and APIs to build applications for Healthcare, Fintech and Open categories.
    March 26th to May 9th, 2021

💰 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

Drilling down: Co-Development

Having gone over the subtleties and complexities of open-source software and open standards in general, we will now drill down into how exactly DIF advances both, in the form of a “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) document. In this FAQ, we'll cover what co-development means in general, at DIF, beyond DIF, and in legal terms. Co-development isn't just in the DNA of DIF-- DIF's primary purpose is to set the stage for co-development, because we feel it's the fastest way forward to adoption and evolution of our field.

Steering Committee Elections are just around the corner!

We made a quick explainer on our blog to clear up the procedure in anticipation of next month's elections.

Sidetree has reached v1 status!

After years of robust collaboration and hard work, the Sidetree Protocol has been iterated and specified to a DIF's standards. If you have a hazy notion of what Sidetree is and how it compares to "regular" DID Methods and blockchains, now might be a good time to read our new blog post outlining the major implementations and showcasing the contributing companies.

🎈 Events

Internet Identity Workshop #32
April 20 - 22, 2021 (Online Event)

  • The Internet Identity Workshop has been finding, probing and solving identity issues twice every year since 2005. IIW32 will be online, at an altered schedule to accomodate more time zones. Every IIW moves topics, code and projects further forward. People from the traditional IAM industry and tech giants collaborate deeply with researchers, journalists, activists, startups, tinkers and thinkers!
  • Use this coupon code for 20% off your ticket(s): DIF_XXXII_20.

Identiverse 2021
June 21 - 23, 2021: Hybrid Experience
June 23 - July 2, 2021: Continued Experience

OpenID Foundation Virtual Workshop
April 29, 2021 - 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM CEST (Online Event)

  • OpenID Foundation Workshops provide technical insight and influence on current Internet identity standards.
  • Among others, this workshop will provide updates on all active OpenID Foundation Working Groups as well the OpenID Certification Program.
  • Technologists from member organizations and others will provide updates on key issues and discuss how they help meet social, enterprise and government Internet identity challenges.

💼 Jobs

Members of the Decentralized Identity Foundation are looking for:

  • A remote lead for an SSI standards/strategy team!

Check out the available positions here.

🔢 Metrics

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Twitter: 4.339 followers | 19,3k impressions | 3.793 profile visits
Website:28.776 unique visitors

In the last 30 days.

🆔 Join DIF!

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