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Upcoming 

• Update: Conversation with Phil Windley & his new book: Learning Digital Identity 2/28 Online

• DID:Day 3/1 around ETHDenver - also WalletCon

• APAC Digital Identity unConference 3/1-3 Bangkok, Thailand

• [Now One Day!] Thoughtful Biometrics Workshop virtual unConference 3/16 [Registration]

• FediForum virtual unConference 3/29-30

• Internet Identity Workshop 4/18-20, Mountain View, CA

• Heroes of Data Privacy – the practise-oriented data privacy conference in Vienna LionsGate 5/24 Vienna, Austria

• Save the Date Digital Identity unConference Europe DICE, 6/7-9, Zurich

What are biometrics? Kaliya Identity Woman

I first was exposed to biometrics at scale when I was working within the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace – Identity Ecosystem Steering Group that would host meetings “next to” biometrics conferences. They were really kinda freaky for the technology presented and how I imagined it all being used.

Hiring

• Open position: Sales Intern (until 2/28) MyData 

• Open position: Marketing & Communications Intern (until 2/28) MyData

Funding

Introducing Ceramic Grants: Origin Cohort

The Ceramic Origin Cohort sums up to a total of $250,000 awarded across 19 grants. , The grant categories include: Education, Tooling, Social, Gaming, Identity/Reputation, Usability

Call for papers

The Web Conference 2023 (formerly WWW) Austin TX, 4/30-5/4

• the practical deployment of emerging web standards or research results;

• software systems, products, tools and their effective use in delivering web platform experiences to users;

• open problems that you believe require the joint attention of developer and researcher communities.

Literature

On Decentralized Trust Decentral Gabe

The code regulates. It implements values, or not. It enables freedoms, or disables them. It protects privacy, or promotes monitoring. People choose how the code does these things. People write the code.

[whitepaper] User-Controlled Privacy Using Self-Sovereign Identity ATIS

ATIS announced the release of the white paper Self-Sovereign Identity in Telecommunications Services, which [...] explores the potential for a new self-sovereign identity (SSI) standard to be applied across various use cases and how it can aid communications service providers in complying with new data privacy laws.

[whitepaper] Open Banking and Open Data: Ready to Cross Borders? [final] OpenID

1. What are the differences and similarities between different open data ecosystems?

2. Is global interoperability between different ecosystems possible? 

3. Who will be driving this movement and what are the use cases motivating them? How will users benefit?

4. How could cross-border use cases work and what “good might look like”? What are the architecture and governance requirements?

5. What can you do if you believe this is the right direction for Open Banking and Open Data?

Phil’s new book is out

[amazon] Learning Digital Identity: Design, Deploy, and Manage Identity Architectures Phil Windley

• Learn why functional online identity is still a difficult problem for most companies

• Understand the purpose of digital identity and why it's fundamental to your business strategy

• Learn why "rolling your own" digital identity infrastructure is a bad idea

• Differentiate between core ideas such as authentication and authorization

• Explore the properties of centralized, federated, and decentralized identity systems

• Determine the right authorization methods for your specific application

• Understand core concepts such as trust, risk, security, and privacy

• Learn how digital identity and self-sovereign identity can make a difference for you and your organization

Explainers

[twitter spaces] What is Decentralized Identity and Why do we need it? Veramo

Why has Digital Identity not been Solved? Dick Hardt, ChatGPT

there has been progress made in recent years to solve these problems and create more secure and user-friendly digital identity solutions. However, this is an ongoing process that requires collaboration between technology companies, governments, and other stakeholders.

Verifiable data will become a blood supply for the new digital economy - but there's a twist Customer Futures

They enable digital trust to travel WITH the data itself. Where it came from. If it’s been changed. Who it was given to.

Markets

2023 Digital Identity Landscape Liminal

This segment was created to highlight the technological differences between DID/VCM and Identity Wallets. Identity Wallets are how you can “carry” your credential with you. DID/VCM applications, on the other hand, are the infrastructure that enables verified credentials to be issued and verified following W3C decentralized identity standards. 

Market Signals — Identity and “Super apps” Indicio

Is everyone going to migrate to one of a few super apps and do everything within one platform architecture— or would it make more sense to use “super” credentials created from strict identity assurance processes to be able to access any platform or service you choose?

Standards

Native JWT Representation for Verifiable Credentials Mike Jones

Nice shout out to Orie Steele from Mike Jones. 

there is now a native JSON Web Token (JWT) representation for Verifiable Credentials. This representation uses IANA-registered JWT claims whenever applicable [...] we finally have a Verifiable Credentials representation that doesn’t require the use of JSON-LD.

Announcing Presentation Exchange v2 Kim Hamilton Duffy, DIF, Claims & Creds WG

different kinds of wallets using different cryptography and credentials formats can be added and subtracted over time, abstracting out many of the divergences in today’s verifiable credential systems.

Development

Trinsic’s Interactive API Experience Using Postman and Buf Studio Trinsic Blog

By following the steps below, you’ll be able to experiment quicker, experience our API’s functionality, and understand how Trinsic Ecosystem works without having to setup any project environment.

Launch of Digital Health Pass open source project Marie Wallace

In 2022, IBM Watson Health became Merative, [...] supportive of the open-source community as demonstrated by its contributions to Linux for Health, and therefore has decided to release the Watson Health credentialing technology (previously IBM Digital Health Pass) into open-source. 

Building mudge's wallet Cyberforge (Anil John)

to ensure that wallets truly remain under individual control we must pay attention to choices being made in its development such that the future does not become a collection of proprietary vertical cylinders of excellence (silos), and that individuals have true choice in how and when they select wallets for their personal use.

Use-case highlights

I got 99 problems, but recognition ain’t one: Open Workplace Recognition. In practice. WeAreOpenCoop

• 👩‍💻Freelancers deal with different kinds of recognition problems. They have to have business management and client acquisition skills in addition to whatever product or service they might be offering.

• ✊ A small agency, business or cooperative often offers more control for the people who work within it. Depending on the organisation and management of an agency, workers may have ways of recognising another that are built into the culture of the workplace.

Solidarity not Solutionism: Wayfinding just paths for Digital Infrastructure that serves the planet The Engine Room

Thinking about what we are building

The Engine Room’s research highlighted the lack of transparency around the climate and environmental impacts of the tech sector, where bold pledges have been made in recent years with very little detail of actual progress made available to the public.

Forming a digital nation, based on fundamental human rights principles and the goals of the hazaristan charter Digital Hazaristan

SSI turning up in interesting places

our mission is to empower the Hazara of Hazaristan by constructing a self-sovereign identity, building the ecosystem of e-Hazaristan

[podcast] The Internet of Things (IoT) and How It Drives Sustainable Supply Chains Next Level Supply Chain

Reducing waste and improving product quality are the keys to a successful and sustainable future. Senior Vice President at Wiliot, Steve Statler, will join us to talk about the Internet of Things – what it is and how it can help drive a more sustainable supply chain…and world.

Company News

Energy Web: Now Available on Azure Energy Web

This is an important milestone, as it represents our first core enterprise solution component to be made available with a seamless user experience, and without the need for specialized technical resources.

MemberPass product enhancements and “Bring Your Own Identity” for New Accounts Bonifii

MemberPass Express (No Code / Low Code) Bonifii’s achievements in 2022 continue to build the on the product value that MemberPass will bring to the credit union industry and beyond

Spruce Developer Update #28

TreeLDR is a schema definition language that aims to describe the structure and semantics of the defined schema in a comprehensible way. It lies at the intersection between RDF and structure-oriented schema definition frameworks such as JSON Schema.

Beyond SSI 

• [survey] Most Kiwis worried about protecting their identity DigitalIDNZ

• Final Version of “Open Banking and Open Data: Ready to Cross Borders?” Whitepaper Published OpenID

• Airport Facial Scan Program Needs to Stop, Senators Tell TSA Bloomberg Law

• Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner’s annual report for 2021-2022 Gov.UK

• Causal Inference at Onfido Onfido -  Structural Causal Models have two key elements: a graph (DAG) representing the causal structure and a set of equations (Structural Equation Model).

• Why economists cannot get their heads around personal data MyDex

Verifiably private computation Brave Browser 

Sometimes, however, it is necessary to process sensitive data, and cryptographic building blocks like multi-party computation or homomorphic encryption may not be an option.

Educate your staff or get hacked. Stories from a Social Engineer with Jenny Radcliffe, The People Hacker UbiSecure

A “burglar” for hire and entertaining educator, she has spent a lifetime talking her way into secure locations, protecting clients from scammers, and leading simulated criminal attacks on organisations of all sizes in order to help secure money, data and information from malicious attacks.

Web+

• Holochain Dev Tools Released

• Learn to Build on Holochain

[Podcast] Joel Thorstensson: Ceramic – Building the Dataverse Epicenter 

Ceramic’s goal of decentralising ‘social’, account-based data in the form of user-generated event streams, that could unlock true application interoperability built on a composable data layer.

Is Mastodon a commons? Doc Searls Weblog

Twitter is like being on a cruise ship the size of a continent. Some Mastodon boats might be cruise liners with as many as 50,000 passengers; others are just dinghies with a single occupant!

Fediverse Funding Opportunities Ben Werdmüller 

At the moment, there’s funding for a handful of micro-grants (non-profit) or micro-investments (for-profit) up to ~$30k each.

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