April 2025
DIF Website | DIF Mailing Lists | Meeting Recording Archive
Table of contents
- Decentralized Identity Foundation News; 2. Working Group Updates; 3 Special Interest Group Updates; 4 User Group Updates; 5. Announcements; 6. Community Events; 7. DIF Member Spotlights; 8. Get involved! Join DIF
🚀 Decentralized Identity Foundation News
Global Digital Collaboration Summit Announced: Registration Now Open for July Geneva Conference
The Global Digital Collaboration, a new partnership of intergovernmental, standards, and open source organizations, has launched its official member registration websites to advance public-private cooperation on digital infrastructure following the Global Digital Compact. The inaugural conference will be held July 1-2 in Geneva with space for 1,750 attendees.
Register your interest in attending as a DIF community member. We expect to finalize the attendees by May 1.
Those who pre-registered will be automatically migrated to the new site without needing to complete the registration form again.
It's a Wrap for DIF Labs Beta Cohort
DIF Labs concluded its inaugural Beta Cohort program with a showcase featuring three groundbreaking decentralized identity projects tackling pressing challenges at the intersection of privacy, trust, and digital authenticity. The standout projects included Veranon (enabling private personhood verification), Linked Claims (building trust networks for credentials in an AI-dominated world), and Ordinals Plus (connecting Bitcoin ordinals with decentralized identity). With Beta Cohort 2 applications opening in late April and the program kicking off May 20, DIF Labs continues its mission of supporting human-centric identity solutions that preserve authenticity in our digital landscape.
DIDComm and Cloud Data Encryption
The DIDComm Working Group recently published a timely solution for personal data protection in light of Apple's decision to stop offering end-to-end encrypted iCloud storage in the UK. Their article explains how users can maintain privacy by implementing DIDComm encryption before uploading files to cloud services, effectively creating a user-controlled security layer that even cloud providers cannot access. The post highlights practical implementation methods and resources for those interested in this open-source approach to data sovereignty.
Read more:
🛠️ Working Group Updates
Browse our working groups here
Creator Assertions Working Group
The group discussed the evolution of their work with institutional news media and individual content creators, focusing on the identity claims aggregator model. They explored challenges in documenting assurance levels for identity signals and considered a version of the specification for content creators with autonomous credentials.
DID Methods Working Group
The group conducted a deep dive on the DID Key specification, discussing its maturity, supported key types, and potential improvements. They are working on establishing criteria for recommending certain DID methods and implementing a review process to evaluate which methods are mature enough for standardization, with particular attention to interoperability and adherence to DID core standards.
Identifiers and Discovery Working Group
The team focused on two main areas: implementing a well-known DID configuration for DIF to link DIDs to domain names, and finalizing version 1.0 of the did:webvh specification. They made progress on implementing watcher features for long-lasting DIDs and resolved issues related to metadata, error codes, and DNS-based identity verification systems. The specification will soon be released as version 1.0.
🪪 Claims & Credentials Working Group
The group worked on developing a standardized repository for credential schemas in the decentralized identity space. They explored aspects like key validation, long-term availability of DID documents, and URL operations. They're creating comparative tools for different schema approaches and building a structured organization with community drafts, working group approved, and DIF recommended categories.
Applied Crypto Working Group
The team made progress on several cryptographic aspects of BBS+, including pseudonym generation and Sigma protocols. They discussed the potential adoption of their specification by CFRG, exploring issues around privacy concerns and encoding formats. The European wallets definition now includes a section on zero-knowledge proofs that references BBS and BBS+ signatures, representing significant adoption of their work.
DIF Labs Working Group
DIF Labs is preparing for its next cohort.
DIDComm Working Group
Discussions centered around the Trust Spanning Protocol, potential improvements to DIDComm, and the pros and cons of different encoding methods like CBOR. The team also explored ideas for a user-friendly notification system and addressed issues with connection reuse, concluding with plans for future meetings to further discuss these topics.
If you are interested in participating in any of the Working Groups highlighted above, or any of DIF's other Working Groups, please click join DIF.
🌎 DIF Special Interest Group Updates
Browse our special interest groups here
DIF Hospitality & Travel SIG
The H&T SIG has made substantial progress on their HATPro traveler profile specification, focusing on standardization for names across different cultures and languages while addressing challenges in data transfer protocols. The group refined their implementation guide to include digital wallets and agent interactions, and explored decentralized identity concepts with guest presenters from Condatis showcasing practical applications. Work continues on schema development and integrating verifiable credentials terminology, with thoughtful discussions on balancing legacy systems compatibility with modern data sovereignty principles.
DIF China SIG
APAC/ASEAN Discussion Group
Achraf and Subash from OCBC Bank's blockchain team presented their experience with blockchain, self-sovereign identity, and verifiable credentials. They demonstrated the implementation of a cross-authentication system for multiple bank tenants and the creation of a publicly verifiable claims system using Verifiable Credentials technology. The presentation highlighted a practical financial industry application of decentralized identity technologies.
DIF Africa SIG
The monthly gathering featured a presentation by Anushka Soma-Patel on decentralized identity, digital trust ecosystems, and the Ayra network. The discussion covered data privacy challenges, verifiable credentials, and governance in digital trust systems. The Ayra network was presented as a platform to enable safe, secure, interoperable, and sustainable digital trust ecosystems.
DIF Japan SIG
The group held a session on KERI (Key Event Receipt Infrastructure), an open-source decentralized identity system that offers a blockchain-independent autonomous model. The presentation included a demonstration of verifiable credential issuance using KERI, explaining its key event logs, witness system, and ACDC credential format. Members discussed potential applications and the current maturity of development tools.
DIF Korea SIG
📖 DIF User Group Updates
DIDComm User Group
The group explored enhancing DIDComm with two-factor authentication for SSH, discussing technical implementations and user experience. They proposed improvements to the routing protocol notification system and debated the use of lower trust keys for user-friendly notifications. The team also addressed connection reuse challenges and evaluated encoding methods like Sibor versus Caesar for future versions of DIDComm.
Veramo User Group
📢 Announcements at DIF
Conference season is kicking into high gear, and Internet Identity Workshop 40 is next week! Explore our Events calendar to meet the DIF community at leading Decentralized Identity, Identity, and Decentralized Web events.
🗓️ ️DIF Members
👉Are you a DIF member with news to share? Email us at communication@identity.foundation with details.
🆔 Join DIF!
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New Member Orientations
If you are new to DIF join us for our upcoming new member orientations. Find more information on DIF’s slack or contact us at community@identity.foundation if you need more information.