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Taking off Christmas and New Years

Just a note to let you know we’ll be taking off those weeks, and will pull their news together for the first issue of the new year, or make some bonus content like we haven’t gotten around to lately.

Coming Up

• Build Your Identity Solution Using Hyperledger Aries • 1/20

• Hyperledger Indy Technical Deep Dive • 2/3

• Data Space Launchpad MyData • Until 2/22

• Identiverse call for Proposals 1/7 Deadline (Event on 6/21-24) 

• The "Completing the Framework" Open Call eSSIF-Lab (until 1/15/22)

  Track 1: SSI Solutions - for a real-world, domain-oriented problem or opportunity, in prioritized eSSIF-Lab areas (Health Tech, e-Government, and Education). 

  Track 2: SSI Framework Extensions - business-oriented extensions to the eSSIF-Lab basic infrastructure

Follow the JoloCom Advent Calendar #JolocomAdvent 

For those of you not familiar with the Christmas tradition of advent calendars. Advent goes from the first day of December until Christmas - in the 4 sunday’s before Christmas there is the lighting of advent candles - a tradition emerged for an advent calendar where one little box is opened each day of December with different surprises. 

Evernym joins Avast​

Joining Forces with Avast Evernym

Joining forces with Avast represents the next step of our journey and an opportunity to bring the privacy, security, and trust benefits of decentralized identity to the entire world.

Avast to acquire Evernym NewsNReleases \ Avast

Adding Evernym’s groundbreaking self-sovereign identity technology to our offering enables us to address this area and is a huge step forward in the realization of a digital world where decentralized, portable identities are available universally and globally.

Avast to Acquire Evernym: Consumer Cybersecurity Meets Decentralized Identity KuppingerCole

Avast’s product suite ranges from VPNs, antivirus, anti-tracking, monitoring of personal information potentially affected by data breaches, and so on. Evernym enables user-centric identity, where the individual user holds, controls, and shares their identity data in a privacy-preserving way.

Czech firm Avast acquiring self-sovereign identity pioneer Evernym Radio Pague International

Our vision for digital freedom is to enable people to manage and retain control over their personal data so that they can interact and transact safely, privately and with confidence. Decentralized digital identities are a key component of that vision

Avast To Acquire U.S.-based Self-sovereign Identity Pioneer Evernym Nasdaq

Stocks traded higher - 614 pounds, up 2.60 pounds or 0.43 percent from previous close.

Explainer

Adobe Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity at LF, Wacom and IdentityNet  Connected Ink

SSI has the power to change the world for the better by flipping the power dynamic surrounding digital identities and trust from large corporations and governments back to the individual. This technology empowers individuals and communities to take back control of both their personal data as well as of their digital assets and identities, and decide exactly how and when this information is to be used and shared. This session explores how SSI-based ecosystems are built and how this transition benefits both individuals and the wider global community.

What is Self Sovereign Identity Florian Strauf

the digital representation of the identification process we know from the physical world. Things like showing our driver’s license to prove we are allowed to drive, or sending a bank statement to a real estate agent to prove our income and account balance. 

What’s in Your Data Ecosystem? State of Identity

Indicio's CEO, Heather Dahl, and CTO, Ken Ebert, identity wallets, verified credentials, the role of the Sovrin Foundation, and new momentum around interoperability across decentralized identity.

Use Case

The Digital Supply Chain of the Future Nis Jespersen Transmute

There is no limit to what a DID can identify. The obvious examples are organizations and people, as explained above. They can also represent assets such as shipping containers, seals, boxes, vessels, or locations, and intangible concepts like bookings, agreements, transactions, or documents.

Top 5 digital identity trends injecting trust back into governance

Robert Zapfel, iov42 Founder, outlines the top 5 digital identity trends that are injecting trust back into governance and enterprise [...]

From health records to product authenticity, a monumental shift in the way that individuals, governments and businesses interact with each other is underway, and shows no sign of slowing down.

The Identity Imperative: Risk Management, Value Creation, and Balance of Power Shifts IdentityPraxis Michael Becker

Brands need to prepare for fundamental shifts in people’s attitudes and expectations. The implications of these shifts will be profound, as they will force a change in competition, business models, product offerings, and business practices.

Development

Building ActivityPub into Known Ben Werdmüller

Known has supported Indieweb standards since the beginning, but Fediverse has been notably missing. I think that’s a big omission, but also not something I’ve had bandwidth to fix.

ActivityPub support · Issue #2615 · idno/known · GitHub

This issue now has a funding of 3004.5068 USD (3000.0 USD @ $1.0/USD) attached to it.

• If you would like to work on this issue you can 'start work' on the Gitcoin Issue Details page.

• Want to chip in? Add your own contribution here.

• Questions? Checkout Gitcoin Help or the Gitcoin's Discord

• $5,664,407.63 more funded OSS Work available on the Gitcoin Issue Explorer

Kim Cameron Memorials

In Memory of Kim Cameron Phil Windley

Kim's technical excellence got him a seat at the table. His position at Microsoft gave him a big voice. But what made Kim effective was his gentle approach to technical discussions, especially those he thought might be contentious.

​​The gentle lawgiver Doc Searls

What I want to celebrate, however, isn’t just Kim’s thoughts and works, but his example: of how an open and generous person in a giant company can use its power for good, and not play the heavy doing it. That’s what Kim did for the two decades he was the top architect of Microsoft’s approach to digital identity and meta systems

Orgs News

Me2BA supports ending all surveillance advertising on children

We think that focusing on Facebook’s surveillance advertising is a good step in the right direction. However, there are several other significant threats to kids out there. In particular, Google’s YouTube is used by 69% of kids in the United States today, who reportedly spend approximately 1.5 hours a day on the app

New steward for #GoodID: Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University Omidyar Network

The Center recently launched the Institute for Rebooting Social Media [...] In connection with this Institute and the Berkman Klein Research Sprints, and through the Center’s ongoing work with the over 100 international Network of Internet and Society Research Centers, the Center will support conversations about digital identity issues that will reach diverse and interdisciplinary communities of research and practice.

New in OpenID Land

The OpenID Foundation Welcomes Visa to the Board of Directors OpenID

Visa’s leadership in global payments and identity services as well as their longstanding commitment to standards will be of great value as we tailor our strategy to this moment.

Okta Joins the OpenID Foundation Board to Further Advance Open Identity Standards OpenID

“OpenID Connect is one of the most adopted identity standards, providing essential functionality to core solutions across the industry,” said Vittorio Bertocci, Principal Architect, Auth0.

Public Sector

Self-Sovereign Identity Working Group European Blockchain Association in collaboration with the European Commission

Right now, many enterprises and organisations are building their own SSI solutions by implementing the existing standards and protocols. Since all these parties do similar work and have to face similar problems, it is critical for the community to share these learnings and experiences openly.

Participate in Alberta's First Verifiable Digital Credentials Pilot ATB Ventures and Govt Alberta

As a part of the pilot, you will add your MyAlberta Digital ID as a verifiable credential to your mobile digital wallet (on your smartphone) and use this digital credential to open an ATB Pay As You Go Account - Digital Credential account with ATB Financial.

Worrisome Ethiopian project 

Why a Little-Known Blockchain-Based Identity Project in Ethiopia Should Concern Us All Cigi Online

Hoskinson says his mission is to give people in Africa control over their own lives. But in reality, his plans for Ethiopia appear crypto-colonial. As researcher Pete Howson explains, “Innovators are not drawn to fragile states because they want to fix these things. Poverty and corruption are the ideal conditions for entrepreneurs exploring opportunities to extract resources from vulnerable communities.”

Company News

The Future of Digital Identity in Canada: Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) and Verified.Me 

We are thrilled that the academic journal Frontiers in Blockchain accepted our community case study, “Decentralized, Self-Sovereign, Consortium: The Future of Digital Identity in Canada.” This peer-reviewed article focuses on the benefits of self-sovereign identity (SSI) with blockchain and Verified.Me as an example of these concepts being effectively implemented to create a cohesive, secure service and digital identity network.

The First No Code Solution for Trusted Decentralized Digital Identity SSI on Redundant Blockchains Entrustient

"When building product-market-fit for our platform, we listened constantly to frustrated customers who embraced the concept of SSI, Verifiable Credentials and Blockchains, but who gave up on piecemealing a solution. And the reasons were mostly due to the lack of specialized SSI developers, implementing complex SDK's and code builds, and trying to provision onto blockchain networks,"

Talao, the brand new Self-Sovereign Identity Wallet MCryptoZ

Blockchain-based Digital Identity specialist Talao, a Paris-based startup which focuses on Self-Sovereign Identity options and blockchain-based options is the developer of the primary French smartphone pockets for Self-Sovereign Identity. The firm simply introduced the provision of its new id pockets for all cellular customers in Europe.

Cool Little SSI Projects

Use CodeB SSI as OpenID Connect Identity Provider for WordPress CodeB

The Self-Sovereign Identity System of CodeB does not only support W3C DID’s but comes also with an inbuilt OpenID Connect (OIDC) Identity Provider. OpenID Connect meets distributed Self-Sovereign Identities.

An authentication system built with Ceramic & self.id dabit3

This project implements a user authentication flow leveraging an Ethereum wallet for single sign on capabilities across all of Web3.

The technologies used are DID (decentralized identifiers), Ceramic, 3id-connect, and Self.ID

Auth0 Lab 

early experiment with Sign in With Ethereum + auth0 

usernameless + passwordless auth

Support for @MetaMask, @WalletConnect, walletlink

profile enriched with ENS + NFTs through @graphprotocol 

Interested? discuss https://discord.gg/rkjYHWHJ

Research

Satellite and geospatial tech for humanitarian crises Caribou Digital

The discussion covered a broad range of topics, from specific data availability to the challenges of applying and translating technical data into usable formats to the application of geospatial data for anticipatory humanitarian response

Designing a Framework for Digital KYC Processes Built on Blockchain-Based Self-Sovereign Identity Vincent Schlatt, Johannes Sedlmeir, Simon Feulner, Nils Urbach

We demonstrate how blockchain-based self-sovereign identity (SSI) can solve the challenges of KYC. We follow a rigorous design science research approach to create a framework that utilizes SSI in the KYC process, deriving nascent design principles that theorize on blockchain’s role for SSI.

Towards the classification of Self-Sovereign Identity properties

The paper provides an overview of the SSI properties, focusing on an in-depth analysis, furthermore presenting a comprehensive collection of SSI properties that are important for the implementation of the SSI system. In addition, it explores the SSI process flow and highlights the steps in which individual properties are important. 

White Paper in progress

Self-Sovereign Identity Personal Data Usage Licensing (SSI-PDUL) Model: Whitepaper Hyperonomy

The scope of the Self-Sovereign Identity Personal Data Usage Licensing (SSI-PDUL) Model is personal digital identifiers and any associated identity data presented by Alice to the App. It does not include the permissioning of data internal to the App (although the natural extension of the solution to internal data is an obvious one)

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