Identosphere Weekly Highlights #5
November 1-7, 2020
Mattr publishes Highlights from IIW
We had an amazing IIW 31. Mattr is a fantastic contributor to the field and again brought their best to the event. They highlight and explain
the latest with KERI
Bridging Decentralized Identity with Federated Identity Systems and
SSI maturing into a multi-dimensional & relationship-oriented identity.
MyDex is working with the Scotish Government
MyDex is a community interest corporation that has been working on building real products in the real world. They wrote about the ongoing work enabling public sector organizations to give citizens verifiable attributes they keep in their own data stores and can prove to other parties without the issuing organization in the middle.
MyData Rocks
Some how the MyData Community got a leaked version of EU Data Governance Act. They wrote a very detailed response to the law, as it is written now, pushing for needed changes to make it really work for a personal data ecosystem where people are empowered with their data.
Self Sovereign Identity Critique, Critique.
You are in for a treat this week Kaliya takes on one of SSI’s loudest critics who makes broad sweeping generalizations without actually getting down to what the technology actually does and accuses our community of “moving fast” and “breaking things” when I would argue we are moving slow and fixing things while creating new creative generative possibilities. As a bonus he decided to say on twitter Kaliya’s expertise was narrow, so she decided to share some of her background to clear up any confusion.
Decentralized-ID.com Updates!
Infominer has been working on curating has some great pages covering companies in the industry. Here are the ones he made this week.
MATTR • Jolocom • Meeco • 3Box • Transmute • Spherity • Evernym • Factom • DHS-SVIP
Think of this as a potential wikipedia of curated lists surrounding decentralized identity. He’s got some big plans for these pages to be dynamically updated with links to recent posts, recently active github repositories, and much more. Content suggestions (links, images, company profiles, etc) are quite welcome!
IIW Archives all on one page.
He also created this fantastic archive of all the IIW session topics going back to IIW #1 2005, with links to notes and books of proceedings, where available.
Decentralized-ID Weekly Twitter Collections
Another project Infominer is working on, affiliated with this newsletter is a weekly collection of SSI related twitter posts. He’s using the Twitter Api to query relevant keywords, and then sorting through the results to filter through finding only relevant content, and the result is a new weekly curated collection that began last week.
DIDs Fabric and Decentralized Networking
DEON is a new Hyperledger project focused in off-line communication networks, independent of internet infrastructure. This could be used to enable networks of devices to communicate peer-to-peer (without the need to ‘phone home’ over the internet), inter-enterprise consortia networks, and enabling user-centric data sharing in a more secure and private fashion.
Decentralized identity: The key to the digital era?
This post was published as a Sponsored Post in Venture Beat.
They quote Forrester “Today’s digital identity frameworks are centralized, suffer from a lack of trust, aren’t portable, and don’t give consumers control.”
They touch on a new acronym saying : enterprise-level thinking around next-generation authentication is focused on initiatives such as SPIFFE, the Secure Production Identity Framework For Everyone
Trinsic Introduces Interactive Connections in their Wallet & Platform
Current digital wallet implementations fall short of the vision of self-sovereign identity (SSI) because they only allow wallet holders to respond to, not initiate, interactions with institutions. This reduces wallet holders to a passive role, which at best delivers suboptimal utility to the holder, and at worst can reinforce the unhealthy power asymmetries between institutions and people that exist today.
Interactive connections solve this problem by creating a two-way street between a wallet holder and an institution. Instead of a passive responder, the wallet holder is a peer who can initiate actions of their own. In addition, wallet holders can interact not only with institutions, but also with other wallet holders, to communicate securely and share verified information [using DIDComm V1].
Indicio is a finalist for the DHS Digital Wallets User Interface Challenge.
The goal of the DHS Challenge is to design a user interface (UI) so that the process of using a wallet to access and perform these functions is clear, intuitive, consistent, and efficient.
This contest was announced in September and had a very tight turnaround. You can see the contest outlines here on the DHS site.
Ontology Officially a Technical Provider for Enterprise Solutions through Cointelegraph Consulting
Cointelegraph has quietly established itself as a legitimate mediator between established enterprises and blockchain technology providers. As a result, a consulting arm was launched that aims to “…connect the world between blockchain and traditional institutions of all sizes by bringing wider adoption of digital assets and enterprise-grade blockchain solutions through education and professional consulting services.”
Coalition of App fairness attracts an SSI Company
GlobalID announces in their newsletter that they are joining the Coalition for App Fairness to advocate for freedom and choice and fair competition in the app ecosystem.
For Big Tech, it doesn’t matter who wins the election (unless you’re Facebook)
h/t GlobalID Report
Individuals in tech are as passionate and fingernail-biting about Tuesday’s election as any other Americans. But the path ahead for the massive companies that have seized the industry’s reins over the past decade will only alter incrementally based on the polls’ outcome.
Global Blockchain Regulation
OECD Global Blockchain Policy Forum
Coming up: November 16-20
The Global Blockchain Policy Forum is the leading international event focused on the policy implications of this technology and its applications, led by the OECD’s Blockchain Policy Centre. Following the second edition of the Forum in 2019, which was attended by more than 1 600 people
There will be a session with a representative from eSSIF talking: DAaps & DeFi: Building for the Future.
Understanding the MiCA and Pilot Regime crypto regulation
During its webinar held on October 7, Adan presented and analyzed the European Commission's regulatory proposals applicable to "crypto-assets", published as part of its Digital Finance Package on September 24. The Association also expressed its concerns about the potential threats these projects pose to innovation. Adan proposes solutions to improve these frameworks and thus promote the competitiveness of the European crypto industry. (Video Available Here)
Exploring Money Resources
A friend hosted a conference on the future of Micropayments this week. I (Kaliya) was inspired to pull together a set of resources on the topic of money based on three decades of tracking this field.
Speaking of Micropayments
I (infominer) don’t know anything about XPID, but I think it’s worth finding out more.
@_XPID_ · Nov 2:
Check out the latest version of our beta prototype in the Appstore for #verifiablecredentials for #LoyaltyPrograms. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1458328593 When #sovereign #decentralized #identity becomes a reality, your #Loyalty and #loyaltyrewards #Wallet will be on XPID. #SSI
New things we aren’t sure about but are SSI-ish
Not Exactly Breaking News
An EDX course titled Becoming a Hyperledger Aries Developer was released on March 4th. It was news to me (Infominer) and I thought it was worth sharing.
Thanks for reading!
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