Sovrin Community Newsletter February 2022

View this email in your browser

February 2022

Technical Governance Board (TGB)

The Sovrin Technical Governance Board (TGB) is participating in three key initiatives within the immediate Sovrin and broader SSI communities. Crucial to Sovrin is the ongoing work to upgrade the delivery pipeline for Hyperledger Indy to enable the creation of a Ubuntu 20.04 version of the Sovrin Steward nodes. Beyond that is work on the new "did:indy" DID Method to enable an Indy "networks of networks", allowing a single SSI component (an Issuer, Holder or Verifier) to easily work with many Indy networks in parallel. Finally, in an effort beyond both the Sovrin and Indy communities is the standardization of AnonCreds, the Zero Knowledge Proof Verifiable Credential data model, algorithms and protocols first implemented in the open source Hyperledger Indy project.

The Sovrin Foundation fully supports each of these initiatives, and the TGB will be key in activating these new capabilities on the Sovrin networks. If you want to learn more about these initiatives, or want to contribute to the work, please contact us at info@sovrin.org.

The Sovrin Foundation is currently looking for members of the Sovrin community to join the TGB. Want to help drive the direction of the Foundation? Nominate yourself (or someone else) to the TGB! See the current members here.

Chair: Stephen Curran

Governance Framework (SGFWG)

The Sovrin Governance Framework Working Group met and discussed changes and edits to the draft of the work-in-progress Sovrin Ecosystem Governance Framework. A highlight for this month has been an extensive review of literature - both informal (blogs) and formal (published research) on the topic of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) with the intent of examining emerging patterns of governance and decision making models. A preview of the work available will also be highlighted in the upcoming meeting of the Sovrin Community in the month of March 2022. The WG is pleased to note that our Objective - Risk - Requirement model of ecosystems is also influencing work being deliberated in other communities of interest.

This article Building a Credential Exchange Infrastructure for Digital Identity: A Sociohistorical Perspective and Policy Guidelines by former Sovrin Trustee Mawaki Chango provides a good background to the principles based approach which makes SSI important for decentralized systems. In our upcoming Sovrin Ecosystem Governance Framework V3, the human-centric approach to The Principles of SSI which the WG presented at IIW32 year ago has been further developed into in a human rights based approach to SSI. This approach enables a view on the potential benefits and harms of SSI to individuals, the first principle being that of representation. This principle is also necessary when we discuss SSI ecosystems - their formation, interactions and sustained engagements. More on this at our upcoming Community Meeting on 2 March 2022. Register here for a free ticket

Chair: Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay
Co-chair: Line Kofoed

Identity for All Council

The Sovrin Identity for All Council is being folded back into the Sovrin Governance Framework Working Group (SGFWG) until further plans have been made with the Board of Trustees. Members can continue to bring their topics and issues to the SGF WG meetings which are on the Sovrin Calendar. A huge thanks to I4A Chair Darrell O’Donnell, co-chair Nicky Hickman and the group members for the past important work for the Sovrin Foundation in achieving its mission of Identity for All!

Guardianship

The Sovrin Guardianship Working Group continues to meet monthly in both hemispheres. As Digital ID becomes more prevalent around the world, the need for digital guardianship is ever increasing. This last year was busy with the creation of the implementation and technical guidelines for guardianship and releasing our newest guardianship white paper within the month. If you have a use case and want to know how guardianship can play a role in your solution, attend one of our meetings and we can create a “Wicked Problem”. The global guardians can come together and possibly provide you a solution.

In addition to guardianship, we also include the “Digital Roundup” where we discuss what’s going on around the world with identity. Check out the Sovrin Calendar and see when our next monthly meeting is in your part of the world.

EMEA
Chair: Jamie Stirling
Co-chair: Lisa Talia Moretti

APAC
Co-chair: John Phillips
Co-chair: Jo Spencer

SSI in IoT

The SSI in IoT WG has had a strong start to 2022. Continuing to build on the work in ’21 on an Aries Embedded Agent and the first of what is starting to look like several white paper on DIDs and VCs in Digital Twins. The WG brought ’21 to a close with a completed proposal of a top-down approach to an embedded agent and started speaking with potential funding organizations.

Our January calls focused on Digital Twins and pushed the work of the first paper from concept to first content being put ‘to paper’. We are targeting a mid year completion of this paper.

In early February, Martin Schäffner from Datarella presented the MOBIX Deep Parking Multimodal Mobility PoC that was part of the IAA auto show in Munich in October of ’21. This PoC is a joint effort of Datarella, Fetch.ai, Bosch and Ocean Protocol, and it was underpinned using DIDs and VCs for Driver, Car and Parking Lot Gate Controller. Identity and parking reservation being automatically exchanged between IoT devices.

Chair: Michael Shea

Please check the Sovrin Calendar for links to join calls.

Interested in joining any of the Sovrin Working Groups above? Email us at info@sovrin.org or simply join the calls through the calendar links.

Community Call with Board of Trustees

Wednesday 2 March | 5pm UTC

Sovrin Board of Trustees and Governance Framework chairs Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay and Line Kofoed spark a discussion about human rights based Principles of SSI in relation to "Membership, delegation and decentralization", a current topic in the Sovrin Governance Framework Working Group. We invite the community to discuss!

Annual Meeting Board of Trustees

Wednesday 30 March | 5pm UTC

Sovrin calendar

Sponsor Sovrin monthly

Why do we need sponsors?

Our objective is to maintain a sustainable ecosystem in keeping with our principles, while remaining independent of any external powers or funders.

As a nonprofit organization, the Sovrin Foundation relies on the generous donations of its supporters to continue to provide the essential elements needed to revolutionize trust and privacy in digital identity.

Your donations directly support the continued development and maintenance of the Sovrin Network and its governance as well as the community engagement and SSI advocacy we lead around the world.

Starting at $10 a month, you can sponsor our open source work in Identity for All.

Behind the Sovrin Foundation is an infrastructure designed to enable true digital self-sovereign identity (SSI). In accordance with the decentralized nature of blockchain technology, Sovrin infrastructure is open source and receives contributions from people around the world. A first step to working with the Sovrin community is to become a member by visiting our website.

Sovrin Community offers

Are you planning on joining IIW34? Get a 20% discount on your ticket

Feel free to share or subscribe to our monthly newsletter.