🚀 DIF monthly #9

May, 2020

Welcome to the 2020 May 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 Face to Face Session - Virtual edition - June 16h, 2020

Join us for the DIF Face to Face meeting - now in a virtual form! Discuss the past, present, and future developments by our Working Groups, align on the next steps on Interoperability, nourish relationships with overlapping community efforts (e.g.: CCG and Aries), take part in educating the community, and discuss the questions that are most important for the broader DIF ecosystem.

Whether you are a DIF member, an industry fellow, or just a curious identity enthusiast, the DIF F2F Session is open to everyone who is interested in the current state of the decentralized identity stack.
Register here using eventbrite.
Don’t hesitate to invite others from the broader identity community!

Cryptographic Secret Recovery work item at DIF

“By definition, in a decentralized identity system, there is no centralized service to provide an “I forgot my password” button.”
The whole point of a Decentralized Public Key Infrastructure (which is the underlying paradigm that has led to the development of Decentralized Identifiers and many other related technologies) is that individuals, organizations, and things create and manage their own cryptographic keys without reliance on a central authority or intermediary… read more here

First Results of the Glossary Project

DIF kickstarted the Glossary Project last year to facilitate the emergence of contextualized vocabulary that is widely accepted across the decentralized identity community/industry - in other words, to understand, what language is currently being used to design the ecosystem and socialize its early users.

We are happy to present you the first report-out of the Glossary Project, regarding the definition of the keywords “wallet”, “agent”, and “credential”. The group would also like to thank everyone for their valuable contributions. The first milestone was achieved - but the work continues. Join the effort by signing up for the mailing list here.

🛠️ Working Group Updates

Identifiers & Discovery

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

Added Universal Resolver drivers for did:abt, did:v1, did:key, did:dock, did:factom. Link.
Updated driver development documentation for Universal Resolver and Registrar.

Discussed linking between DID-domain-linkage (in both directions).

In the near future:

Discuss trust in DID resolvers.
Continue work on KERI.

🛡️ Claims & Credentials

Verifying claims and assertions of identities.

Chairs: Martin Riedel, Wayne Chang & Jonathan Reynolds
GitHub Repos: <did-jwt-wc> | <papers> | <credential-manifest> | <presentation-exchange>

Continued work on Presentation Exchange Format. Link.

Concentrated on the “Definition” (Request) side specifying solution approaches for requesting specific credential types, selective property selection via JsonPath and constraint definitions for individual properties.

In the near future:

There still exists very active discussion around the right query language to support selective disclosure or constraint selection mechanisms. (e.g. JSON-LD Framing or JSON Path,…). The group will concentrate to resolve these discussions within the next month.

DID Auth

DID-based authentication specs, standards, and libraries.

Chairs: Kyle den Hartog & Oliver Terbu
GitHub Repos: <authentication-wg> | <did-siop> | <did-authn/siop>

SIOP DID specification and reference implementation

In the near future:

Closing new DID SIOP issues

DID Comm

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

Chairs: Sam Curren, Oliver Terbu & Tobias Looker
GitHub Repos: <DIDComm-js> | <didcomm-messaging>

Certain concerns emerged about JWM Addressing / Layering and Zero Round Trip.

In the near future:

Resolve the above-mentioned concerns about JWM Addressing and Zero Round Trip.

Sidetree

The development and maintenance of the formal Sidetree specification,

Chairs: Orie Steele & Daniel Buchner
GitHub Repos: <sidetree>

The Sidetree specification is nearing a version 1 release, with only a few sections left to go.

The group expects a final draft of the specification to be ready within the month, at which point there will be an open call for review by DIF members and the wider community.

In the near future:

Publish updates on two implementations of the Sidetree protocol, as well as progress toward finalization of the specification in response to the review/comment period.

Secure Data Storage

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

Chairs: Kaliya Joung, Tobias Looker, Dmitri Zagidulin
GitHub Repos: <SDS>

We got our charter settled and began meetings. Link.

EDV and Identity Hubs repos are consolidated. Github

In the near future:

Getting the work started on synthesizing the input documents.

Glossary

We completed the first three Glossary Terms, Credential, Wallet, Agent. Link.

In the near future:

We will be planning the next steps and potentially defining 3-6 more terms in our next cycle.

☂️ InterOp

Demonstrating interoperability across various teams/project and technology stack.

Verifiable credentials interop work. Link.

In the near future:

Merging the HTTP APIs so they can be updated faster, adding support for holders so that end to end tests can be automated. Link.

Please note:

If you would like your DID Method / Agent or Hub implementation to be supported, please use GitHub issues and contribute to the InterOp discussion in related working groups. Opinions are welcomed.
You can join the mailing list by signing up here.

🦄 Member Updates

Bloom

We launched Bloom 2, a major update to the Bloom mobile app. Link.

Funding

Data Portability & Services Incubator - European Commission (EU)

A 9-months-long supporting program, powered by the European Commission, with a €5.6 Million fund for innovators developing solutions in the Data Portability field.
Participants get:
Up to €150K equity-free funding
Free infrastructure, training in business and data, and coaching.
Learn more 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 their 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 amount of funding
Learn more here.

🖊️ DIF / Media

Cryptographic Secret Recovery work item at DIF

One of the most important challenges that remain in decentralized identity architecture is the key management. This is the reason why the DIF Identifiers & Discovery Working Group is excited to announce an open call for contributions and development of new secret recovery schemes, and implementations.

read more here

Metrics

Medium:
1k followers | 2.267 minutes read
Twitter:
3443 followers | 10.9k tweet impressions | 479 profile visits
identity.foundation:
10.641 unique visitors

In the last 30 days.