Identosphere Highlights #8 - Odyssey Momentum Winners • Ethereum-Oasis • EU Data Governance Act

November 22-28 wasn't the fastest moving in the SSI news cycle, but we still found plenty of interesting stories to share, and learned a few things, as always.

Nov 29, 2020

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Newsworthy

Thoughtworks has put Verifiable Credentials into the “Assess” category on their Radar Map, which also has a spot for Decentralized Identity (as we mentioned last week).

Odyssey Momentum 2020 Winners Announced

Rabobank won with a demonstration of their Identity Wallet app, along with their Identity API. Their Pilot projects are “Pilot with WorkPi” and a Credential Catalogue with TNO. If you want to know more about Rabobank ID check out this interview of Rabobank’s David Lamars, from Tykn.

Another winner was Lunarpunk Labs with Hermitage, a GDPR compliant data store, putting users in control of their data and derisking organizational need for safekeeping that data.

ODYSSI was also chosen, offering a simple API for verifying and issuance of credentials, that interoperates with IRMA, Jolocom, and eSatus. They also shared what they’re calling the yellow pages of SSI, which is a place to publish and find credentials, schema, pricing, and liability. (if you can find a link for ODYSSI please pass it on!)

Last but not least WORK PI shares an alternative to LinkedIn, holding your diplomas, certificates, assessments, peer reviews, or references in your WorkPi Data Profile.

Watch the finale of the SSI track at Odyssey here

EU Data Governance Act officially released

Last week the EU published its new Data Governance Act, to “foster the availability of data for use by increasing trust in data intermediaries and by strengthening data-sharing mechanisms across the EU”.

You may recall that earlier this month Mydata commented on a leaked copy of the act.

we advocate for careful scrutiny of the articles, as the Data Governance Act will be regulating a market that is in its very early stages with many cycles of innovation to come. Thus, the regulation will have a strong influence in the nascent market.

One of MyDex CIC’s founders, Alan Mitchell shares a feeling of Vindication in a post celebrating the companies early articulation of key principles and how the EU’s proposed new Data Governance Act aligns with that.

These providers will have to comply with a number of requirements, in particular the requirement to remain neutral as regards the data exchanged. They cannot use such data for other purposes. In the case of providers of data sharing services offering services for natural persons, the additional criterion of assuming fiduciary duties towards the individuals using them will also have to be met.

Thoughts on Identity

SSI Has an Identity Problem

This image comes from an excellent post by Rielly, from Trinsic, where he talks about the challenge of defining the term Self Sovereign Identity.

Next Stop: A Global Verification Network

Tim Bouma highlights the types of electronic global networks and lays out a case that the Next Stop in the evolution networks will be a Global Verification Network.

The hardest part ahead is not the technology, it’s the wholesale re-conceptualization of what is required for a global verification network that puts the power of the network back into the endpoints that is you and me.

Big thinking re: Values, Principles and Rules

Kaliya & Tony worked together and wrote a piece together about connecting values, principles and rules surrounding identity and personal data.

“what do we think is the north star for data and identity and on what principle they are built?” How do these principles help us agree on risks, and will our existing rules help or hinder us?

The “Next Ethereum”?

@RyanSAdams tweeted this week:

The “next Ethereum” isn’t a smart-contract platform it’s a decentralized identity solution

You can read that thread to learn which projects are claiming\hoping to be the one. As if, to dismiss all hopes or pretensions, Ryan followed up with “And it doesn’t exist yet.” I wonder if this tweet has anything to do with the leading item in the next section:

Open Standards

Ethereum OASIS Open Project

Ethereum has created a partnership with OASIS, working on a protocol called Baseline, and building an Org Registry for the Ethereum space. OASIS Open is the web/business process standards body for the internet (The other two being W3C and IETF). Their new Ethereum project has its own GitHub organization.

Ethereum OASIS is sponsored by the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, Ethereum Foundation, ConsenSys, Chainlink, Nethermind, Provide, and Unibright.

While it’s just come up on our radar, apparently this project was launched in March of this year, and read about on the Oasis Open Projects blog:

Grant Negotiation and Authorization Protocol (GNAP)

The work on GNAP proceeds, and Aaron Parecki shares how the editors will use GitHub Issues ‘to develop a fine-grained delegation protocol for authorization, API access, user identifiers, and identity assertions.’

On the Auth0 Podcast Identity Unlocked Vittorio Bertocci interviews Dick Hardt about SignIn.org and the Genesis of the GNAP working group.

Decentralized Profiles group at Ceramic

Every 6 weeks the Decentralized Profiles group at Ceramic meets. This is the post about their Nov 25th call (Kaliya attended). There, I learned about two things that I’ve heard of, but never seen in action.

BrightID (a singular address that is linked to your friends’ ID in a “web of trust”) and UBDI a company founded by Shane Green (who passed away last year and had also founded Personal.com, that was sold to Digi.Me). UBDI lets you pull in data from a whole variety of sources and then make deals to get $ for your data.

Ceramic continues work in the ID space with 3IDConnect - along with the slightly problematic frame that users have “a DID” (GitHub)

Infographics

In case you missed it

Last month, the DIF Interop WG made a survey “of implemented DID Methods and list cryptographic key types that they support”, producing this map as an output of that survey.

This next graphic comes from Verifiable Credentials Use Cases. Not exactly new, but still worth sharing.

Decentralized-ID.com Updates

Infominer continues to make awesome progress in creating pages for a whole range of groups and projects.

Schema.org WG • DIDComm WG • DIDAuth WG • Identifiers and Discovery WG • Interop WG • Secure Data Storage WG • Planetwork • Claims and Credentials WG

Infominer recently determined the site has roughly ~500 visitors every week, with 20-50 search clicks a day, which provides additional incentive to ensure core principles and processes are properly conveyed. (Contact for content collaboration)

Update: I read that wrong, according to Cloudfare, over 2000 visitors this week…

Now featuring the Augmented Social Network Whitepaper

Additional updates to the site have been made: On the home page, posts in each category are now sorted by last updated, so it’s easier to find the most recent content.

Aaaaand a page was made for the Augmented Social Network, composed of the complete ASN whitepaper, plus on-page navigation. The intention is the bring this germinal 2003 paper to the new generation coming into decentralized identity.

The Augmented Social Network is a proposal for a “next generation” online community that would strengthen the collaborative nature of the Internet, enhancing its ability to act as a public commons that engages citizens in civil society. The ASN creates an infrastructure for trusted relationships across the entire Internet – enabling innovation in democratic governance, alternative economics, and social organization of all kinds. The ASN is not a piece of software or a website. Rather, it is an online community system in the public interest that could be implemented in a number of ways, using technology that largely exists today.

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