January 2025
DIF Website | DIF Mailing Lists | Meeting Recording Archive
Table of contents
- Decentralized Identity Foundation News; 2. Working Group Updates; 3 Special Interest Groups; 4. Community Events; 5. Get involved! Join DIF
🚀 Decentralized Identity Foundation News
Are you in APAC? For the first quarter of 2026, DIF's new Executive Director, Grace Rachmany, will be in the Singapore area. It's an opportunity for us at DIF to get to know (and possible add) members in this part of the world. Grace is actively looking to meet our members and attend events in the area, so please reach out. Of special interest: content people (think Bollywood and KPOP) and Agentic AI, as well as anyone using DIDcomm.
Membership: Goodbye Office Hours, Hello Hot Takes!
The DIF Office Hours have trailed off, with no attendees having questions for the staff. You may be thinking: "but I still want the chance to meet new cool members of DIF!" We've got you covered. Starting in February, we will be introducing a series where we'll combine updates from the field with networking. This month SC members will be participating in MOSIP Connect and in DID Unconference Africa, and reporting back to us in the following format: 10 minutes from 2 participants on their takeaways from the conference, 10 minutes of back-and forth (hopefully they don't agree on everything), and then half an hour for you to share your hot takes.
- February 17, 9 am UTC: MOSIP Hot Takes with Markus & Juan.
- Live call: find it on the DIF Calendar.
- March: DID Unconference Africa Hot Takes with Eric & Gideon
- (Time to be announced in the February newsletter!)
🛠️ Working Group Updates
Browse our working groups here
Creator Assertions Working Group
CAWG crowned 2025 with the approval of the CAWG Identity Assertation specification v1.2, which received Steering Committee approval. The WG also drafted a User Experience Guidance document which was approved in its most recent meeting. Trust Registries are an upcoming topic of discussion, with Darrell O'Donnell scheduled to present Ayra's Trust Registry Query Protocol (TRQP) in the coming weeks. The TOIP group exploring interoperability of digital identity containers is disbanding, and has offered to see if CAWG would be interested in adopting their X.509 - Verifiable Credentials Interoperability Draft specification.In the coming weeks, three additional taskforce workstreams will be launching for General Purpose VCs, ACDC VLEIs and Relationship Matrix VLEIs.
Hospitality and Travel Working Group
The Hospitality and Travel Working Group will be issuing a survey of different types of hospitality, travel, and entertainment providers to understand their identity needs. The data will be collected using Google surveys under the DIF domain with a DIF working group email. The 2FA requirements on Google made everyone involved wish that Google would implement more decentralized authentication protocols for multi-user accounts.
The WG is working on an article for Phocuswright, and a schema that is planned for draft review by February 1. The WG has been engaging in deeper discussions on details of the schema given the complexity and variation in the kinds of information they expect to collect.
👉 Learn more and get involved
Trusted AI Agents Working Group
The Trusted AI Agents Working Group is launching a Delegatable Authorization Task Force, and have begun by creating a content outline to define the output of a report that will be created by the Task Force. Quite a bit of analysis, prior art, and academic work has already been collected by members of the WG and the document will get a jumpstart based on collating those free-form conversations into a grounding overview. More hands-on work prototyping the targeted use-cases is also starting to get underway, using existing protocols and frameworks.
DID Methods Working Group
The DID Methods Working Group meeting focused on reviewing the status of various DID methods and their progress through the recommendation process. Currently, 11 DID methods are at different stages of approval, but only 2 are in active review, so other DID method champions are welcome to schedule "deep dives" and parallelize the review. On slow weeks, time is balanced between issue review (on the process itself) and the open PRs for active-review methods under onboing participation.
Identifiers and Discovery Working Group
The Identifiers and Discovery Working Group enjoyed the holidays.
🪪 Claims & Credentials Working Group
The Claims and Credentials WG has been taking a deep-dive into creating a "dogfooding" implementation, issuing DIF membership credentials. The group is considering the FPP approach and the Verifiable Community approach. The incoming ED clarified that the working groups should be the authorities on active membership credentials, rather than centralizing power through the centralized authority of the ED, who doesn't have a real sense of how to assess active contributors. The group also discussed concerns expressed by international participants around going to conferences in the United States, due to evolving entry requirements.
Applied Crypto Working Group
The BBS+ Work Item of the Applied Crypto WG discussed the progress of an advanced, yet little-known method called did:webplus, which is being finalized to incorporate both Blake and SHA-3 keys and signatures (on verified updates). The current draft RFC for BBS+ signatures at CFRG WG at IETF, has been reviewed and discussed by the WG chairs.
DIDComm User Group
The DIDComm User Group hosted a presentation by Entidad CTO Jorge Flores, demoing a working implmentation of DIDcomm for a decentralized fintech platform, using DIDcomm for group chat and private messaging between their web and mobile Unmio clients. DIF is actively looking for more DIDcomm implementations we can demonstrate to show the viability of DIDcomm and it's place in the wider landscape of international standards, so please reach out to the chairs if you have a demoable project at any stage of development.
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
With the holidays this was a slow month. We'll update on the SIGs in February. Browse our special interest groups here
DIF Hospitality & Travel SIG
DIF China SIG
APAC/ASEAN Discussion Group
DIF Africa SIG
DIF Japan SIG
DIF Korea SIG
📖 DIF User Group Updates
DIDComm User Group
Veramo User Group
📢 Upcoming Events
Will you be attending any upcoming Identity events? Let us know so other DIF members can find you!
MOSIP Connect 11-13 February, 2026 (Morocco)
Two day agenda and one-day unconference for the MOSIP community. Expect to see Steering Committee member Markus Sabadello (DanubeTech) and DIF staffer Juan Caballero participating on-stage at the Conference, as well as in the daylong Unconference facilitated by DIF member Kaliya Young. February 17th Markus and Juan will be giving their Hot Takes on MOSIP. See the DIF calendar for details.
DID Unconference Africa 24-26 February, 2026 (South Africa)
DID:UNCONF AFRICA brings together local and international innovators, leaders, and activists to reshape the future of digital identity. This event fosters innovation, collaboration, and interoperability, making a significant impact on the inclusive development of digital identity in Africa. For the second year running, DIF will be sponsoring the event. Expect to see Steering Committee Member and CAWG Co-chair Eric Scouten in attendance. Eric and Africa SIG Chair Gideon Lobard will be giving us their Hot Takes in March. Watch the February newsletter and DIF calendar for exact time and date.
ITB Berlin, 3-5 March, 2026 (Berlin)
DIF Member Alex Bainbridge (Autoura) will be speaking about identity at the world's largest travel conference.
IETF 125 Shenzhen, 14-20 March, 2026 (Shenzhen)
Our new Executive Director, Grace Rachmany, will be attending IETF125 this year in APAC.
Internet Identity Workshop IIWXLII #42
📅 April 28–30, 2026
📍 Mountain View, CA
Registration and details
Agentic Internet Workshop #2
📅 May 1, 2026
📍 Mountain View, CA
Learn more
Identiverse 2026
📅 June 15–18, 2026
📍 Las Vegas, NV
Conference details
Identity Week Europe 2026
📅 June 9–10, 2026
📍 Amsterdam
Event information
Call for Co-organizers: GDC 2026
The 2026 Global Digital Collaboration Conference has been announced for September 1-2, 2026, in Geneva. Entities who wish to participate as co-organizers to co-create the agenda can apply here.
Authenticate Conference 2026
📅 October 19–21, 2026
📍 Carlsbad, CA
Details coming soon
🗓️ ️DIF Members
📻 DIF Labs Co-Chair Daniel Thompson-Yvetot gave a great overview of the new EU Cyber Resilience Act and how much of a burden it is or isn't for various types of software manufacturers on an episode of the Open Source Security podcast.
👉Are you a DIF member with news to share? Email us at communication@identity.foundation with details.
🆔 Join DIF!
If you would like to get in touch with us or become a member of the DIF community, please visit our website. DIF membership is free for individuals and companies with up to 1000 employees.
To get updates about DIF, follow our channels:
