Next Generation SSI Standards

Verifiable credentials remove the need for usernames and passwords, thereby significantly reducing the possibility of identity theft. Interworking tests will be carried out between Europe (Crossword Cybersecurity and Fraunhofer) and the USA (Spruce).

ProjectID

NGI-ATLANTIC:OC05-378

Acronym

Additional Info

Self Sovereign Identity (SSI) is a new paradigm, with new technologies and concepts, specifically: verifiable credentials (VCs) and decentralised identifiers (DIDs). In order to minimise the learning curves for new users and administrators, and improve user acceptance, we are building our SSI infrastructure on existing infrastructures wherever possible.
Because the standards we propose to utilise (W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model, Decentralised Identifiers and OIDC4VCs) are either new or still under development, there are many ambiguities, errors and omissions in them that need to be corrected. By independently implementing these (draft) standards in Europe and the USA, and performing interworking tests between the continents, will allow us to identify these issues and suggest corrections to the standards organisations.
Finally, looking ahead there are certain useful SSI functionalities that currently are not standardised.

Enduser Relevance

This project will help to strengthen the trustworthiness of the Internet by issuing people with standardised cryptographically verifiable credentials that allow relying parties to strongly identify them.

Contact

Dr. David Chadwick, (Crossword Cybersecurity PLC)

Endorsements

Not available yet

Disclaimer

This experiment is currently underway.

Country:  United States

NGI Project:  NGI atlantic

Status: Early research demo

Category: Decentralized solutions (including blockchain and distributed ledger technologies)Middleware and identity (including DNS, authorisation, authentication, reputation systems, distribution and deployment, operations)