Identosphere 219: Getting ready for the Executive Order • Visa Report on Digital Identity and Payments • Beyond Data as Oil•
We curate the latest in decentralized identity and verifiable credentials: events, jobs, funding, use-cases and more in open standards and the government. Your support is appreciated
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Upcoming
Newly Listed
Faster, more secure IAM with Verifiable Credentials 1/28 Indicio
Previously Listed
New → [Washington, DC & virtual] Identity, Authentication & the Road Ahead 2025. 01/28
[Berlin] European Cloud and Identity Conference [Call for Proposals] Until 01/31
[Cape Town] DID:Unconf Africa 2/18-20
DIF Proof of Age Workshop (Credential Schemas Special Session) 1/28
[Zurich] Digital Identity Unconference Europe - Ecosystems 3/4-5
[Manila] MOSIP Connect - March 11-13
[Orlando] Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit 2025 3/3-5
[London] Future Identity Finance 3/19
[Netherlands] IDM Europe 4/1
[California] Internet Identity Workshop #40 4/8-10
[Washington DC] IAPP Global Privacy Summit 2025 4/21-24
[San Francisco] RSA Conference 2025 4/28-5/1
Jobs
[UK Remote] Staff Backend Engineer Notabene (Node.js, Kafka, PosgresSQL, AWS)
[Leipzig, SN] Neuer Job: System Engineer Blockchain - SSI Stolzberger (DIDComm, Aries, or Verifiable Credentials, Java,JavaScript or Golang)
[Remote] Software Engineer Hopae (Node.js and TypeScript)
[Remote] Technical Product Manager Hopae
Standards Development
[twitter] Isaac Henderson presented on "Verifiable Issuers and Verifiers List" at W3C CCG. 2025-01-16 tang_talks
Verifiable issuers and verifiers’ list assists Holders and Verifiers to validate the authenticity of entities and know who/what to trust in a decentralized approach without a centralized authority. Its data model is inspired by ETSI Trust List’s data model, consisting of the trust list operator’s information, service provider’s metadata and offered services. It has been used by Gaia-X (an European initiative to develop a federated data infrastructure) w3c-ccg-weekly-2024-12-17.mp4 (start at 7 min mark)
Is anybody out there? xditao.blogspot.com
Yes Andy we are still here…come to IIW40
I am, at heart, still the XDI Guy. My passion for robust, secure, and scalable distributed data management hasn’t waned. Building one of the first XDI implementations (shout-out to Markus Sabadello, who might have built the only other one), I learned a lot about the challenges and opportunities of distributed data at scale. Over the years, I’ve reflected on qualities essential for data ecosystems, qualities that are often overshadowed by content-driven ecosystems.
Explaining Verifiable Credentials and Open Badges 3.0 Part 2: Issuing Badges 2025-01-13 ; Kerri Lemoie; blog.dcconsortium.org
Open Badges 3.0 vs. Older Versions
Trust model: Open Badges 3.0 based on W3C Verifiable Credentials data model
Issuing process: Olivia retrieves badge via secure link and claims it in her digital wallet
Different trust models: older versions rely on reputation of hosting platform, while 3.0s are digitally signed files with cryptographic trust
Government
[USA] How you can be ready for the new White House order to strengthen digital identity 2025-01-16 ; Tim Spring; Indicio
Biden administration's final order emphasizes cybersecurity measures, including digital identity documents for accessing public benefits programs
Replaces current account and password systems that are known to be insecure
[India] ID tokenisation will help minors pass age test under new data rules: Ashwini Vaishnaw 2025-01-07 ; thehindu.com
Tokenization of Identity Documents: Proposed solution for child verification; a digital representation of data without exposing original
Draft Rules Aims To: Safeguard personal data, drive growth and inclusivity, prioritize citizen-centric governance.
[YouTube] Driving Decentralized Identity in Buenos Aires with QuarkID 2025-01-15 Diego Fernández, Riley Hughes; Trinsic
joined by Diego Fernández, co-founder of QuarkID and Sovra, to discuss the innovative decentralized identity solution rolled out by the city of Buenos Aires. QuarkID has garnered international attention for its self-custodial identity wallet app, and Diego provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at its development, challenges, and growing adoption.
How to issue Verifiable Credentials EBSI hub
Two logical boundaries in the Provider side: Authorisation Server (AS) and Credential Issuer
Clients: Holder Wallets or Service Wallets, not callable from internet, interactions facilitated through redirects or QR codes
Initiation of VCI process: Issuer or end-user initiated flow
Company Stories
Japan’s DNP sets eyes on Asia-Pacific cross-border digital credentials 2025-01-13; Biometric Update
The 150-year-old conglomerate also wants to take its decentralized identity across borders and has co-created an Asia-based consortium to help it achieve this.
Business
Reflections on Ecosystems denkeni.substack.com
As for the enterprise market, it’s not so simple. The people that use the products don't decide for themselves. And the people that make those decisions sometimes are confused!
Is Decentralized Identity Suitable for Foundational ID Systems Smita Selot 2025-01-17
decentralized systems are evolving and will continue to play a crucial role in the identity landscape. While decentralized identities may not be the primary choice for foundational identity systems currently, they do offer effective solutions for addressing data sovereignty and privacy challenges.
Beyond Data as Oil: A Fresh Framework for Understanding Your Organisation’s Data DNA 2025-01-15 Tony Fish
In today’s data-driven landscape, executives are bombarded with familiar mantras: “data is the new oil,” “more data equals better decisions,” and “better data means less risk.” Yet these oversimplified narratives are holding organisations back from realising data’s true potential — and protecting against its real risks.
How to save billions of hours per year with Verifiable Credentials 2025-01-14 ; Tim Spring; Indicio
Estimated 10.3 billion hours spent filling out forms in the US annually (US Chamber of Commerce Technology Engagement Center report, 2022)
Number of federal forms increasing, projected to reach 12.3 billion hours by 2024
BlueSky AT Protocol
Free Our Feeds
Bluesky's Foundation:
Incredible foundation for public interest vision of social media
Commercial company facing pressures to maximize return to investors
Total Funds Needed:$30 million over three years
Initial goal: raise $4m for critical infrastructure and foundation setup
Paul Frazee on Bluesky and the AT Protocol 2025-01 Software Engineering Radio
Paul Frazee, CTO of Bluesky, speaks with SE Radio’s Jeremy Jung about the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (ATProto) used by the Bluesky decentralized social network. They discuss why ATProto was created, as well as how it differs from the ActivityPub open standard, the scaling limitations of peer-to-peer solutions, cryptographic decentralized identifiers, and creating a protocol based on experience with distributed systems.
Internet of Things
DBDAA: Dual blockchain and decentralized identifiers assisted anonymous authentication for building IoT 2025-02 Xiaohua Wu a b, Zheng Luo, Jun Cheng, Puyan Wang; sciencedirect.com
Traditional solutions often rely on a single user identity, which poses security risks. Additionally, these solutions overlook the security of user permission information in access control systems. As a result, users with elevated permissions become prime targets for attacks. Existing key management mechanisms also have shortcomings, especially in key recovery processes. To address these issues, this paper proposes an identity authentication mechanism leveraging dual-blockchain and decentralized identifier (DID) technology.
Verifiable Decentralized Identity-Based Meta-Computing in Industrial Internet of Things 2025-01-14; Kai Ding, Tianxiu Xie, Keke Gai, Chennan Guo, Liangqi Lei, Dongjue Wang Jing Yu Liehuang Zhu; ssrn.com
We focus on the verifiability of DID documents and propose a verifiable registration scheme that ensures verifiable binding relationships. In order to enable efficient queries in large-scale users’ identities in meta-computing IIoT, we develop an on-chain-off-chain query strategy that adopts a slide window accumulator. Experiment evaluations have demonstrated that our proposed model has superior performance in efficiency and robustness.
Digital Identity
2025 Predictions for IAM Leaders ; Peter Barker, Max Fathauer; Ping ID
Shift Towards Verification as Cornerstone of Digital Trust
Transparency and Trust in the AI Era
Convergence of Payments and Identity
Growing Adoption of Decentralized Identity
Role of Trust and Transparency in Customer Relationships
[paper] Digital identity and payments: Synergies for enhancing public services and economic opportunity 2024-12 Visa Government Solutions
Web3
Understanding Account Abstraction in Blockchain: Comprehensive guide 2025 2025-01-17 ; Sneha Kumari; metaschool.so
Definition: Development of blockchain technology for higher flexibility, ease of use, and security when dealing with accounts on a blockchain.
Key EIPs and Standards for AA:
EIP-86: Attempted to make transaction validation programmable in 2017
EIP-2938: Introduced "User Operations," allowing users to delegate gas payment to a smart contract
ERC-4337: Realizes AA without changing Ethereum's consensus layer, using encapsulated user actions, bundlers, and Paymaster contracts
Guides support.ens.domains
Artificial Intelligence
Member Spotlight: Alastair Johnson of Nuggets 2025-01-13 Decentralized Identity Foundation
As AI reshapes our digital world, questions of privacy and digital identity become increasingly critical. DIF member Nuggets is tackling these challenges head-on with their Private Personal AI and Verified Identity for AI Agents
AI Agents Need Agent-to-Agent Protocols to Excel 2025-01-13 ; Volodymyr Pavlyshyn; ai.plainenglish.io
Agent-to-agent Protocols: The backbone of a robust and scalable AI ecosystem, encoding behavior, enabling social norms, implementing governed structures, and ensuring interoperability.
As AI continues to evolve, focusing on protocol development will be crucial in unlocking new dimensions of capability and innovation.
