Identity Archives – Hyperledger Foundation

Jan 25

Hyperledger Mentorship Spotlight: GVCR: Secure Verifiable Credential Registries (VCR) for GitHub & GitLab

By Sarvesh Shinde Blog, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Mentorship Program, Hyperledger Ursa, Identity

What did you work on?

Project name: GVCR: Secure Verifiable Credential Registries (VCR) for GitHub & GitLab

My name is Sarvesh Shinde and this is my personal blog that I’m writing to share my experience of working on the GVCR Project. A little background about the project is really necessary to fully appreciate the objectives of this project.

Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is a digital identity management model in which an individual or a company has the exclusive ownership over their accounts and personal data. A verifiable credential protocol, in turn, forms one of the three pillars of Self-Sovereign Identity, along with the Decentralized Identifiers protocol (DIDs) and Distributed Ledger Technology (or blockchain).

This project was conceptualized to provision secure verifiable credential registries that utilize Github’s data model and API to offer exactly the same APIs for any other verifiable credential registry. This project exists as an extension to the DRMan project.

The DRMan project, inspired by the SDKMan, acts as a tool for managing multiple versions of different software development libraries. These libraries form the necessary dependencies for the extended feature modules that reside inside DRMan, including GVCR.

What did you learn or accomplish?

GVCR, along with DRMan, is a command line utility. This project has been entirely written in shell script. Shell script has a distinct advantage of making the tool light weight, easy to install and to use.

As of now, GVCR has been provisioned to utilize Github and Gitlab as its two git based registries. The plugin architecture of GVCR allows it to provision for more VCRs in the relative future. The APIs of these individual git based registries are designed to be a collection of facade functions that provide the same feature on the surface, all the while accommodating for the individual data models of the specific registry under the hood.

GVCR can be utilized in an Hyperledger Aries Framework as an implementation of VCR and collaborates with existing Agent and Wallet open source projects in Hyperledger Aries. It can also be used in Hyperledger Indy projects by providing endpoints of cryptographic verifications for credential issuers.

In near future, GVCR is envisioned to leverage Hyperledger Ursa to implement encryption, decryption and verification functions for verifiable credentials.

I was responsible for the design and implementation of this very GVCR module.

Now coming to the topic of the mentorship program itself, let me give you a rundown of its structure, working mechanism and decision making process. This mentorship was a careful balance of a hands-off approach towards the design planning and realization part that I undertook and the existence of biweekly meetings that acted as an efficient feedback mechanism from the mentors. These biweekly meetings were really efficient in setting the tempo of the progress and made sure that all the involved participants were aware of their individual tasks at hand.

The mentorship started on June 1st and continued until November 16th. Further, the mentorship was broken into two halves. In general, the first half was more focused on the design aspect of this project while the second half came down to its implementation.

What comes next?

Overall, this mentorship has been a wonderful experience and has enabled me to pursue my career in blockchain. The future of a secure, verifiable digital identity and its co-operability with a decentralized ledger brings a new outlook to the future of digital identity and just how important its acceptance is to finally realizing the ultimate goal of exclusively owning our own identities. New technologies are constantly coming up to make this future a reality, and I’m looking forward to contributing my part towards it.

Nov 15

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Announcing Hyperledger AnonCreds: Open Source, Open Specification Privacy Preserving Verifiable Credentials

By Stephen Curran, Maintainer, Hyperledger AnonCreds Blog, Hyperledger AnonCreds, Identity

AnonCreds, the most commonly used Verifiable Credential (VC) format in the world*, is now a Hyperledger project. Ledger agnostic and with a formal open specification, AnonCreds continues to evolve as a mature verifiable credential format with unique privacy-protecting capabilities. As a Hyperledger project, AnonCreds will have support to grow its code base and community on a global level with technical governance that fosters best open development and security practices.

As the Internet transitions to allowing people, organizations, and things to have greater control over the sharing of their credentials, protecting privacy is of paramount concern.

Hyperledger AnonCreds—short for “Anonymous Credentials”—is a type of VC that adds important privacy-protecting ZKP (zero-knowledge proof) capabilities to the core VC assurances. A core element of the Hyperledger Indy project for more than five years, AnonCreds is a mature, complete model and interactions set, with extensive support across Hyperledger Aries frameworks.

The creation of this project signifies the continued healthy evolution of an open source software project that was once monolithic and is now a set of well-defined independent components.

Hyperledger AnonCreds is ledger-agnostic and client-agnostic. It is not tied to Hyperledger Indy or Aries. This makes it usable with other verifiable data registries/ledgers and verifiable credential client stacks. As a result, important privacy-protecting capabilities become available to a much broader audience, and the underlying cryptography can evolve without affecting the features above it.

Additional benefits of using Hyperledger AnonCreds include:

Avoidance of identifiers: No correlatable identifiers are required in presenting data to a verifier. Correlatable identifiers may be applied in a use case specific manner.
Verifier assurances: Credentials are bound to the holder, so verifiers know that credentials presented together were all issued to the holder providing the presentation.
Minimal data sharing: Data to be shared by a holder to a verifier is minimized through the use of selective disclosure and ZKP predicates

Flexible formatting: Credentials and presentations can be formatted in the W3C VC Data Model standard format.

AnonCreds has joined the Hyperledger ecosystem with over 25 sponsors. The project consists of:

The AnonCreds Specification, managed by the Hyperledger AnonCreds Specification Working Group and with the potential of being submitted to an appropriate Standards organization
Ledger/Verifiable Data Registry-agnostic, open source code implementations of the AnonCreds specification, suitable for use with Hyperledger Aries and non-Aries agents
Guidance for creating ledger-specific AnonCreds Methods to write and resolve AnonCreds objects for specific ledgers
Documentation on AnonCreds suitable for all audiences, from business audiences to cryptographers
A test suite to verify adherence to the AnonCreds specification and the interoperability of AnonCreds implementations.

Next steps include evolving the existing AnonCreds Rust implementation to be friendlier to VDRs/ledgers other than Indy, wrapping up the v1.0 specification, and gaining compliance with the W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model Standard.

If you’re interested in learning more about AnonCreds start with the Hyperledger AnonCreds project page. From there you can find how to join project discussions on Discord, add yourself to the project mailing list, find the AnonCreds repositories on GitHub, and join the AnonCreds Working Groups.

We welcome interest from all groups and organizations, including enterprises and standards organizations. We look forward to hearing from you!

*Source: godiddy.com combined “sov” (Indy) network volume

Sep 28

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#HyperledgerIdentity round-up: A cross section of production digital identity solutions built using Hyperledger technologies

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Ursa, Identity

Verifying identities and information in a digital world is critical for establishing trust. But there are issues of privacy as well as efficiency, scale and accuracy in models that rely on centralized data collectors and databases.

The adoption of a new generation of digital identity solutions that leverage decentralized technologies such as distributed ledgers and verifiable credentials is accelerating. And Hyperledger technologies are playing a major role in this transformation.

Read on for a cross section of the many Hyperledger-powered solutions that are in production now. For other examples, check out these past #HyperledgerIdentity round-ups:

IBM Digital Health Pass

IBM Digital Health Pass, built on Hyperledger Fabric, offers a multi-credential verifier that organizations can use to manage and execute their verification policies for COVID-19 and vaccination status in a way that balances the privacy of the individual with the requirements set by the organization and local health authorities. With IBM Digital Health Pass, organizations can verify multiple types of health credentials, such as Good Health Pass, IBM Digital Health Pass, Smart Health Card and EU Digital COVID Certificate. Privacy is central to the solution, where the verifier application minimizes the personal data that is ever displayed to the user through the execution of business rules and it never lets any personal data leave, or be stored in, the verifier app.

Indicio Network

The Indicio Network is a collection of four professionally-staffed, enterprise-grade public-permissioned ledgers that provide a neutral, independent, and reliable network for the exchange of verifiable credentials. MainNet, DemoNet, TestNet, and TempNet are all Hyperledger Indy-based networks with nodes operating on five continents—and a growing number of node operators. The Indicio Network is one of the networks that can support Indicio Proven, a complete suite of decentralized identity components for authenticating and sharing high value data in a privacy-preserving way using verifiable digital credentials. Built on Hyperledger Aries and Hyperledger Ursa, as well as AnonCreds and DIDComm, Proven is designed to make implementing and using these open source codebases simple, providing users with a fully-owned solution that’s easy to integrate with existing systems, to innovate on, and to scale.

IDUnion

IDUnion, the European identity verification network created as part of the “Secure Digital Identities Showcase” funding project, brings together public institutions, government agencies, private organizations, associations, educational institutions and other stakeholders from various fields to enable a fundamentally new, secure digital infrastructure for the verification of identity information. In August, 2022, IDUnion spun off Sociedad Cooperativa Europea (SCE) to operate the production network for credential verification.

The IDUnion network, which is built on Hyperledger Indy, enables the clear verification of individuals, companies and institutions while allowing people and organizations to manage their identity information by themselves and to decide when they want to share this information and with whom. It has a decentralized structure and stores no personal data – not even as a hash. In order to protect privacy right from the start, all personal data is stored on the user’s end device. Users have a choice of wallets for storing and presenting credentials to third parties as required. Credentials are issued, verified and stored using open standards to ensure interoperability. Hyperledger Aries is the framework for managing the credentials.

NHS Covid-19 Digital Staff Passport

In 2019, the NHS was preparing to pilot a digital passport project that would allow staff to carry their HR and other records as credentials on their phones as a long-term plan to make it easier to transfer from one facility to another. When the pandemic hit, this went from a pilot to a production deployment quickly. The NHS Covid-19 Digital Staff Passport rolled out in summer to support swift and efficient staff movement between NHS organizations in response to the response health emergency. The COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport provided a solid legal framework for staff to be temporarily deployed into other NHS organizations with evidence available that checks have been completed before staff move. As laid out in the pilot, the information was transferred securely by the staff member as verified credentials stored on their own smartphone, putting them in control.

This staff passport used the Sorvin Network, which is built on Hyperledger Indy, to verify the digital credentials, and the Evernym (now Avast) Connect.me digital wallet app, which is powered by Hyperledger Aries, Indy and Ursa, to enable staff to store and share their credentials.

The NHS is now gearing up to roll out the next generation of its Digital Staff Passport, which will streamline transfers and staff movements through the NHS.

OrgBook BC

OrgBook BC is a searchable public directory of organizations registered in British Columbia, Canada, provided by the BC Government’s Ministry of Citizens’ Services. OrgBook BC provides verified data, including legal names and DBA names, business numbers, BC registration status and select licensee and permits, for more than 1.4 million organizations. All of the information in the OrgBookBC is received, stored, verified and displayed using the latest digital trust technologies.

OrgBookBC uses verifiable credentials to ensure that information about organizations are digitally signed by the entity that issues it. Issuers are public sector organizations that hold information about businesses, issue licenses or permits or certify processes. That electronic signature stays with the data throughout its life in OrgBook and is validated before its is display on the website.

OrgBookBC is part of an overall commitment to digital trust technologies by the Government of British Columbia. In addition to deploying Hyperledger Aries, Indy and Ursa, the team there is leading much of the open source development for those projects. Read more on the Government of BC’s investment in verifiable credentials and digital wallet technologies here.

Digital Identity updates from Hyperledger Global Forum

At Hyperledger Global Forum 2022, there was a range of business, technical and demo sessions focused on digital identity, including:

Bringing Trustworthiness in Industrial Device Lifecycle using Verifiable Credentials – Marquart Franz & Saad Bin Shams, Siemens AG

Findy Agency — Highway to Verified Data Networks – Laura Vuorenoja & Harri Lainio, OP Financial Group

Digital Identity Using the vLEI – Christoph Schneider, Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)

Blockchain, Biometrics and Geo-Location: Lessons Learned from the Implementation of Innovative Technologies at the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund – Dino Cataldo Dellaccio, United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund & Shashank Rai, United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC)

Hosted Discussion: Rhode Island Leads on Digital Identity Solutions with Hyperledger – Liz Tanner, State of Rhode Island & Jim Mason, DTCC

Last Mile Problem in Self-Sovereign Identity – Biometric Authentification and Device Independent Wallet for Hyperledger Indy – Non Kawana & Ken Naganuma, Hitachi, Ltd.

Workshop: How To Build a Self-Sovereign Identity Agent With Hyperledger Aries Framework JavaScript – Timo Glastra & Berend Sliedrecht, ANIMO & Jakub Koci, ABSA

Join the conversation about blockchain-based identity technologies and solutions with #HyperledgerIdentity on social channels. For a hands-on introduction to the market and technologies, join the free four hour Build Your Identity Solution Using Hyperledger Aries workshop. Or, for a more business level introduction, sign up for the free Getting Started with Self-Sovereign Identity (LFS178x) online course from Linux Foundation Training & Certification.

Sep 28

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Get started with Hyperledger Aries: Accelerate your decentralized identity skills with a free instructor-led Workshop

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Aries, Identity

Hyperledger Aries is one of the fastest growing open source projects propelling the advancement and adoption of decentralized identity and verifiable credentials out there today. More companies than ever are deploying Aries-based agents that allow for trusted online peer-to-peer interactions.

Hyperledger Foundation has partnered with member company Indicio and its team of deeply experienced developers and architects to develop a free workshop to help developers and architects gain a deeper understanding of decentralized identity and become familiar with the technologies that are made possible by using Hyperledger Aries.

This four-hour hands-on workshop provides beginner level opportunities to install and run the Hyperledger Aries components just like you would if you were making a real Aries-based application. Learn where to find the necessary Git repos and see how to use the Indy Command Line Interface (Indy CLI), and run the Aries toolbox to create and issue a verifiable credential.

This course also introduces some current projects using Hyperledger Aries to help you accelerate your understanding of decentralized identity and build the skills necessary to successfully make changes to the underlying code with hands-on guidance to develop your own projects.

About the Course

Build Your Identity Solution Using Hyperledger Aries
Thursday, November 10, 2022
8 AM to noon Pacific
Register for free

This course, “Intro to Decentralized Identity,” is part of the Hyperledger Foundation Community Workshop series. It is a four hour online course that introduces the core concepts and principles of decentralized identity. As you progress, you’ll learn how to use a Hyperledger Indy-based network, be introduced to the Indy CLI, and install and run the Hyperledger Aries toolbox to create, issue, and verify a verifiable credential.

Topics also include:

Decentralized identity concepts and principles
The verifiable credential data model
Decentralized identity ecosystem
Introduction to network tools Indyscan and SelfServe
Intro to Indy CLI and how to use the CLI to access a network
What Aries is
Install and run the Aries Toolbox
Create connections and issue a credential
How to verify a credential

Participants are encouraged to review the course prerequisites, including the installation of docker, installation of Indy-CLI, and download of important repositories. Information on prerequisites can be found here.

This course is offered by the Hyperledger Foundation for free to expand the use, contributions, and maintainer community of Hyperledger Indy and Aries. A recording of the course will be made available at the conclusion of the instructor-led event.

Registration links and further information about the prerequisites and course materials can be found at https://wiki.hyperledger.org/display/events/Build+Your+Identity+Solution+Using+Hyperledger+Aries

Sep 13

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Energy & Mines Digital Trust: The Open-Source Journey Towards a Clean, Resilient Economy

By Energy & Mines Digital Trust Blog, Climate, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Indy, Identity

As the world works towards climate goals, a government project from Canada is using digital trust technology to make it easier and more secure for natural resource companies to share sustainability data.

Energy & Mines Digital Trust (EMDT) was established by the Government of British Columbia in recognition that we must do more to facilitate the transition to a clean, resilient economy. British Columbia (B.C.), Canada’s western-most province, was the first province in Canada to implement greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and mandatory sustainability reporting for major sectors of the provincial economy. As leaders in climate change legislation, B.C. is well positioned to explore cutting-edge technology in the journey towards a low-carbon economy. To improve trust, accuracy, and efficiency when sharing sustainability data, EMDT is coordinating a digital ecosystem – a network of organizations including environmental auditors, government bodies, mining and energy companies, and non-government organizations.

Improved Sustainability Reporting

Currently, reporting sustainability data can be challenging. Data is difficult to exchange internationally, and consumers cannot always access, or trust, reported data, not to mention the administrative burden.

EMDT’s digital ecosystem makes it possible to exchange sustainability information simply and securely, using digital credentials.

Digital credentials:

Can be shared quickly and are tamper-proof.
Allow companies to control their data.
Guarantee the integrity of the information.
Preserve privacy in business-to-business interactions.

Digital Trust Ecosystem: EMDT Pilot

EMDT has been testing and refining their technology and governance through multiple pilot projects to demonstrate how sustainability reporting can be made more efficient and trustworthy. Two pilot projects explore greenhouse gas emissions reporting in the mining sector and the natural gas sector. These pilots allow participants to test sharing and receiving digital credentials that include verified GHG emissions data for a specific mine site or natural gas facility.

*Because this is a pilot, the process depicted in this diagram does not satisfy or replace existing regulatory reporting obligations.

The greenhouse gas (GHG) mining pilot builds upon the existing regulatory emissions reporting process in British Columbia. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), an environmental auditor, issues a digital credential to Copper Mountain Mining Company containing verified GHG data. Copper Mountain can then use the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report Verification Credential as part of their GHG emissions report to British Columbia’s Climate Action Secretariat. Copper Mountain can use the same digital credential to complete voluntary reporting to organizations such as the Open Earth Foundation.

Increased Connections

To facilitate the broad exchange of sustainability data, EMDT used Hyperledger Indy and Hyperledger Aries to create a highly interoperable tool, called Traction. Traction is an API accelerator built on top of Hyperledger Aries Cloud Agent Python (ACA-PY). Traction streamlines the process of sending and receiving digital credentials for governments and organizations.

Hyperledger Aries makes Traction highly interoperable with the technological solutions of companies and organizations around the world. “While two wallets might be different implementations or might be written in different code, they can still exchange data because both wallets use Aries,” explains Kyle Robinson, EMDT’s Senior Strategic Advisor.

Traction makes it easier to integrate digital trust technology into existing lines of business:

API-first Architecture: Traction is designed with an API-first architecture. This RESTful API allows for integration into existing line-of-business applications already being used by organizations. The Tenant user interface is built on this API to enable adoption prior to integration and for low-use functions.
Multitenancy: ACA-Py is implemented on a cloud-based server so multiple wallets can be managed with one Traction instance.
Higher Scalability: Traction is open-source technology, encouraging collaborative refinement, faster release, and higher scalability of the technology.

Collaborative Climate Change Progress

With an increasing emphasis on responsibly sourced products, simplified methods for exchanging sustainability data ensures that B.C. natural resource providers can compete in a global market. Digital trust technology streamlines access to trustworthy sustainability data, allowing businesses, governments, and non-government organizations to work towards climate change goals more efficiently and effectively. Visit our website to learn more about Energy & Mines Digital Trust.

Sep 13

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Learn the Fundamentals of Self-Sovereign Identity in Free Online Training Course

By Hyperledger Blog, Identity

This post originally appeared on the Linux Foundation Training and Certification blog.

Our digital identities are part of who we are. Technology has become so pervasive in everyday life that individuals want and need the ability to better manage their online digital identity. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) is a concept that puts users at the center of their digital identity, giving them control over it which helps increase privacy, security and trust in a technology or organization. SSI is growing in popularity as more online websites and applications implement the practice in their user experience.

We want to make it easier for companies to implement SSI for the benefit of their users, so Linux Foundation Training & Certification has announced a new upcoming online training course, Getting Started with Self-Sovereign Identity (LFS178x). The six-to-seven hour course, which will be available to audit for free for 10 weeks on the edX learning platform, provides a solid foundation on SSI with a 360 degree overview of its evolutionary journey, key concepts, standards, technological building blocks, use cases, real-world examples and implementation considerations. Pre-enrollment is open now, with course content becoming available on October 5.

This course is designed for business and government decision makers looking to understand SSI and make decisions about it; technologists seeking to get a high level overview of SSI, and professionals wanting to understand how digital identity systems work and how SSI is making a difference. Upon completion, participants will be able to have informed business discussions around digital identity, and particularly self-sovereign identity, with a good understanding about how identity systems work and influence our lives. You will also be able to identify innovative ideas and solutions for leveraging SSI, and be better positioned for further technical learning around digital identity.

Getting Started with Self-Sovereign Identity was developed by Kaliya Young and Lucy Yang of Identity Woman, which works to bring about the creation of a layer of identity for people based on open standards. Kaliya, widely known as Identity Woman, is an expert in decentralized/self-sovereign identity who has committed her life to the development of an open standards based layer of the internet that empowers people. In 2005, Kaliya co-founded the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) to bring together technologists who want to see decentralized identity come into being. Lucy joined the COVID Credentials Initiative (CCI) on day one and has since led its operations and communications. She played an instrumental role in taking CCI into Linux Foundation Public Health. Lucy also serves on the board of MyData Global, an award-winning international non-profit championing personal data empowerment, and co-founded the MyData Canada Hub, where she is actively involved in strategic development and operations.

Enroll today and start learning October 5 how your organization can modernize your digital identity practices.

Sep 02

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Developer showcase series: Jason Sherman, Developer at Energy & Mines Digital Trust, Government of British Columbia

By Hyperledger Blog, Climate, Developer Showcase, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Indy, Identity

Back to our Developer Showcase Series to learn what developers in the real world are doing with Hyperledger technologies. Next up is Jason Sherman, Developer at Energy & Mines Digital Trust, Government of British Columbia’s Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation.

Give a bit of background on what you’re working on and how you got into blockchain

Energy & Mines Digital Trust (EMDT) is a pilot project enabling a collaborative digital ecosystem between the B.C. government, natural resource companies, and organizations around the world, making it simpler and more secure to share sustainability data. I am currently working on EMDT’s technology, called Traction. Traction is basically a layer above Hyperledger Aries Cloud Agent Python (ACA-Py) that enables the Government of British Columbia to use our technology for line of business applications. This allows the government to onboard into the world of digital credentials easily, and to track their business data with their credential and presentation exchanges.

What Hyperledger frameworks or tools are you using in your projects? Any new developments to share? Can you sum up your experience with Hyperledger?

We are using Hyperledger Aries Cloud Agent Python (ACA-Py) and Hyperledger Indy. Using Hyperledger frameworks has increased Traction’s interoperability, making it possible to incorporate a broader range of participants, tools, and technologies into the digital ecosystem EMDT is coordinating. We’re using Hyperledger’s open-source software to accelerate the Government of B.C.’s ability to adopt these tools. My experience with Hyperledger technologies is that things change quickly! And any problem or use case I identify is usually already being addressed.

What do you think is most important for Hyperledger Foundation to focus on in the next year?

I think the Hyperledger Foundation should focus on multiple ledger support (which is already underway) and onboarding users (not developers) of the implemented technology.

What advice would you offer other technologists or developers interested in getting started working on blockchain?

There is a very steep learning curve, but it’s extremely worthwhile. You will very quickly identify areas where the technology could benefit your clients.

As Hyperledger’s projects continue to mature, what do you see as the most interesting technologies, apps, or use cases coming out as a result?

I am interested in the ability for Hyperledger projects to enable more automated business flows using truly trusted and tamper-proof data. The number of personnel hours that can be saved just through automated conversation and interchange of data programmatically is massive.

What’s the one issue or problem you hope blockchain can solve?

I am hopeful that blockchain has the potential to improve trust between businesses. By exchanging information using blockchain technology and digital credentials, the validity and origin of the credential can always be verified, and businesses can proceed with their interactions confidently.

Where do you hope to see Hyperledger and/or blockchain in five years?

I would hope to see blockchain as a viable and easily selected technology, along the lines of Postgresql or MongoDb. I would hope that blockchain could be adopted as a mainstream technology that development teams can look at as a solution to solve their problems.

What is the best piece of developer advice you’ve ever received?

Your code isn’t precious.

What technology could you not live without?

Plumbing.

Aug 23

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Investing in Verifiable Credentials, Technical Interoperability and Open Source

By the Province of British Columbia, Office of the Chief Information Officer Blog, Hyperledger Aries, Identity

Our 20 Year Journey

Like many provinces and territories in Canada, British Columbia (BC) has a long history of providing secure access to online government services. We started our journey 20 years ago with the introduction of BCeID, a simple username and password solution. A lot has changed since then!

Today, we are investing in Verifiable Credentials (VCs) and a digital wallet. We see these as the cornerstones in the evolution of our digital strategy, adding a much needed layer of trust to the digital economy.

We want to share what we are doing, why we focus on interoperability and open-source, and why we are excited about VCs being our natural next step.

Why We Care

As a public sector organization, BC has a strong interest in seeing the adoption of technologies that are secure, privacy-preserving, and convenient.

Digital is obviously everywhere. In 2021, 94% of BC citizens said they are online, and 90% of Canadians have smartphones. Also, according to the Business Council of Canada, in the last decade Canada’s digital economy grew 40% faster than the overall world economy. In Digital ID terms, this growth is an opportunity to make people’s online lives easier and safer.

We also know that cybersecurity threats are growing and there are no signs of it slowing down. BC sees an astonishing 496 million unauthorized access attempts per day – that’s 5,741 every second! Identity theft and fraud also continues to rise. We need digital trust solutions that counter this increasing risk.

In responding to this new reality, we recognize that people are familiar and comfortable with the many credentials that governments issue today. Things like physical copies of drivers’ licenses, health cards, passports, permits, and reports are widely accepted and trusted. In BC, we are building on that trust and moving towards providing the same things digitally. We are also enabling confidential connections through the wallet to give people choice and confidence in their digital lives.

BC’s Approach

Clearly, digital trust goes far beyond just the government. Canadians expect more access, with greater security, to high-value services in both the public and private sectors. VCs and the wallet provide a highly flexible way to achieve that goal.

Collaboration is critical to achieving that goal and it’s important to us. BC’s Chief Information Officer, CJ Ritchie, strongly advocates for us working together to meet the expectations of Canadians. She notes, “If we don’t all act together to deliver solutions that protect privacy and interact securely, trust will erode and there will be negative impacts for businesses, people’s livelihoods, and the broader digital economy.”

As our approach evolves, we also remain keen to support open source solutions that interoperate with other national and international efforts. There is no dominant design yet, no one network or technology, so we must remain nimble and flexible in our exploration. We also need to coexist with existing identity solutions that millions of British Columbians already rely upon.

Technology Interoperability

In exploring VCs, BC is contributing to solutions that allow agents to verify credentials from multiple networks. Indeed, through one of our Code With Us initiatives, DID indy, we contributed over 11,000 lines of open-source code to support and prove the viability of a “network of networks”.

We also are focused on the interoperability of Hyperledger Aries agents themselves, another key success metric. We are leading contributors to Aries Agent Test Harness (AATH), open-source software that runs a series of Hyperledger Aries interoperability tests and delivers the results to the AATH website. Great interoperability requires that we test—and re-test!—that interoperability on a regular basis.

Side note: If you want to test the interoperability of any Aries agent with this ecosystem, please sign up to join the Hyperledger Aries Interoperability Event on August 31.

Driving Adoption

In BC we have a lot of technical skill in working with VCs and with Hyperledger Aries agents. However, for VCs to be successful, it needs to be easy for others to join in.

On the agents side, to complement our extensive contributions to Hyperledger Aries Cloud Agent Python (ACA-Py) and other Aries and Indy projects, we also contribute to Hyperledger Aries Framework Javascript (AFJ), the agent commonly used for mobile digital wallets.

That’s why, when thinking about mobile digital wallets, we opted to contribute to the Hyperledger Aries Bifold project, helping it also essentially become “Bifold as a framework”. Bifold uses AFJ, and BC and others can use it to easily deploy a custom-designed digital wallet. Jurisdictions within Canada and elsewhere in the world are already taking this approach for their own wallet explorations. It’s an open-source stack right the way down.

VC adoption will be helped by a thriving open-source community, and we are giving back wherever we can.

Open-Source Success

We believe the community’s success becomes our success. For years we’ve been committed to open-source, interoperable solutions in this space. Our approach is always evolving, but our contributions and commitment to various digital trust open-source projects and technologies continue.

We hope that even more organizations will join in and contribute. Our goal in BC is a new layer of trust for the internet, making it easier for people to work and play online with confidence.

Jul 26

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What’s on the agenda at Hyperledger Global Forum 2022

By Hyperledger Blog, Climate, Finance, Hyperledger Global Forum, Identity

We are just weeks away from gathering in Dublin, Ireland, for Hyperledger Global Forum 2022. The hard-working programming committee has put together a packed agenda with a line-up of business and technical talks and panels as well as workshops, demos and more.

There will be more than 100 speakers covering everything from DLT operations to the future of NFTs & tokenomics and from the Metaverse to interoperability. Below are just a sampling of the topics and sessions on tap for the largest global gathering of the Hyperledger community, taking place September 12-14:

Climate

Blockchain – Sustainable Supply chain, SDG, Climate & Carbon Credit Tokenization – Kamlesh Nagware, Snapper Future Tech
Cactus Helps Cross-Industries Collaboration to Tackle Climate Change – Shingo Fujimoto, Fujitsu
Panel Discussion: Carbon Accounting Digital Trust Pilot With Hyperledger Indy/Aries – Nancy Norris, Government of British Columbia; Martin Wainstein, Open Earth Foundation; Kyle Robinson, Mines Digital Trust
Under National Strategy of Carbon Neutralization, How To Build Up a Whole MRV System With Hyperledger Fabric – Dong Ning, China Mobile

CBDC

Hyperledger Iroha: Enabling CBDC and FinTech Use Cases (Bakong CBDC in Cambodia) – Makoto Takemiya, Soramitsu
Towards a Scalable, Privacy-Preserving, and Regulatable CBDC Framework – Mark Rakhmilevich, Oracle
US Digital Currency: Opportunities, Challenges and Strategies – Jim Mason, DTCC
Creating a Retail CBDC Prototype With Hyperledger Fabric – Imre Kocsis, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Making Distributed Ledgers Interoperable Using Weaver (Hyperledger Labs) – Venkatraman Ramakrishna, IBM
Workshop: Moving Central Bank Digital Currency from Conception to Reality with Hyperledger Technologies – Elli Androulaki & Angelo De Caro, IBM

Digital Identity

Enabling Interoperability and Multi-Ledger Support for Decentralized Identity Platforms – Hitarshi Buch, Wipro Technologies
Findy Agency — Highway to Verified Data Networks – Laura Vuorenoja & Harri Lainio, OP Financial Group
Digital Identity Using the vLEI – Christoph Schneider, Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)
Blockchain, Biometrics and Geo-Location: Lessons Learned from the Implementation of Innovative Technologies at the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund – Dino Cataldo Dellaccio, United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund & Shashank Rai, United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC)
Hosted Discussion: Rhode Island Leads on Digital Identity Solutions with Hyperledger – Liz Tanner, State of Rhode Island & Jim Mason, DTCC
Last Mile Problem in Self-Sovereign Identity – Biometric Authentification and Device Independent Wallet for Hyperledger Indy – Non Kawana & Ken Naganuma, Hitachi, Ltd.
Workshop: How To Build a Self-Sovereign Identity Agent With Hyperledger Aries Framework JavaScript – Timo Glastra & Berend Sliedrecht, ANIMO & Jakub Koci, ABSA

Enterprise Blockchain

Taking on Challenges of Enterprise Blockchain Infrastructures – Dr. Ravi Chamria & Ghan Vashishtha, Zeeve
Latest Technology Adoption Trends in Enterprise Blockchain Projects – Jim Zhang, Kaleido & Tracy Kuhrt, Accenture
Solving Market Problems With Open Source Verifiable Credentials – Heather Dahl, Indicio & Mike Vesey, IdRamp
Design Patterns to Practically Scale Blockchain Networks – Deepika Karanji & Arun S M, Walmart Global Technology Services
Why You Shouldn’t Just Trust Your Blockchain – And Apply Critical System Design – Imre Kocsis, Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Hands-on ½ Day Workshops

Workshop: Moving Central Bank Digital Currency from Conception to Reality with Hyperledger Technologies – Elli Androulaki & Angelo De Caro, IBM
Workshop: How to Build Full-Stack Web3 Apps Faster with FireFly SuperNodes – Nicko Guyer, Kaleido
Workshop: Developing Interoperability Applications with Hyperledger Cactus – Peter Somogyvari, Accenture
Workshop : Developing Applications with Hyperledger Fabric – Josh Kneubuhl, IBM
Workshop: Hyperledger Bevel – Sownak Roy & Suvajit Sarkar, Accenture
Workshop: How To Build a Self-Sovereign Identity Agent With Hyperledger Aries Framework JavaScript – Timo Glastra & Berend Sliedrecht, ANIMO & Jakub Koci, ABSA

Come join us for these sessions and more as well as non-stop networking, knowledge sharing and collaboration. And a night of celebration at the historic Guinness Storehouse! View the full schedule, sponsors and activities at: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/hyperledger-global-forum/program/schedule/

Registration details are here. Save 20% registration with the code HGF22NWSLTR and, if you are not already a subscriber, please subscribe to our newsletters for the latest news and developer insights.

Still not sure why you should attend? Watch our Hyperledger Global Forum Returns video thanks to our returning Diamond Sponsor Accenture.

Jul 21

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Developer showcase series: Daniel Bluhm, Indicio

By Hyperledger Blog, Developer Showcase, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Indy, Identity

Back to our Developer Showcase Series to learn what developers in the real world are doing with Hyperledger technologies. Next up is Daniel Bluhm, Software Engineer at Indicio.

Give a bit of background on what you’re working on and how you got into blockchain

I am currently working on Hyperledger Aries Cloud Agent – Python and other agent implementations. I spend most of my days working on agents and protocols. I first got into blockchain at the Sovrin Foundation where I got my start as an associate software engineer. I was actually around at the founding of the agent ecosystem, back when we all collaborated in the Hyperledger Indy Agent Working Group. I was one of the first implementers and continued working with it as the community grew. Eventually it snowballed into the Hyperledger Aries project.

What Hyperledger frameworks or tools are you using in your projects? Any new developments to share? Can you sum up your experience with Hyperledger?

I really like where things are going with the Aries Cloud Agent – Python repo, driving towards more pluggability and making it so we can extend functionality without changing the core project itself. I am also excited to get did:indy method support into Hyperledger Indy, as well as multi-ledger support in ACA-Py.We already have reads down, so now we’re just working on the writes.

What do you think is most important for Hyperledger to focus on in the next year?

We have a really diverse and thriving community in the Hyperledger Aries space; what we really need going into 2022 is a push for greater adoption of the technology and getting it into the hands of people who aren’t engineers. I would also really like to see a focus on encouraging more interaction with the Hyperledger Indy project, especially after seeing how positively this affects our work with Hyperledger Aries.

What advice would you offer other technologists or developers interested in getting started working on blockchain?

The biggest piece of advice I could give is to not be afraid to step in, contribute, and break stuff. It doesn’t matter if your pull request isn’t perfect.The maintainers of the project will work with you to get it right.

As Hyperledger’s projects continue to mature, what do you see as the most interesting technologies, apps, or use cases coming out as a result?

The technologies that are most interesting to me are the ones that allow us to use multiple different technologies at the same time – which is exactly what we’re striving for in Hyperledger Aries. This enables us to take advantage of the strengths of one technology – be it blockchain, communication, protocol, crypto suite, or something else – and use those strengths to shore up the places where another technology might fall short. Beyond that, anything that makes it easier and more efficient for the end user will be a huge step in the right direction.

What’s the one issue or problem you hope blockchain can solve?

The biggest problem that I would like to see blockchain solve is power imbalances. This applies across the board, to finance, representation in government, data used and collected by big orgs, and other scenarios we just haven’t thought up yet. I’d like to see blockchain enable individuals to have a say in how they are treated and be more self-deterministic – they should have at least some level of control over what’s running their lives.

Where do you hope to see Hyperledger and/or blockchain in five years?

I would like to see Hyperledger and blockchain technology in general in the hands of real people. They don’t necessarily need to be aware that they are using a blockchain. In fact, I think there are some really good arguments to the contrary. But it should be a positive influence in their lives as it is used day to day. I would like to see the blockchain space settle down, drop some of the hype, and just be used for what it’s good at.

What is the best piece of developer advice you’ve ever received?

No one gets it right on the first try. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, break tests, crash CI/CD pipelines, or push broken code. Don’t do it intentionally, of course, but the faster you can get at shortening the “experience a failure, find the problem, implement the fix” cycle, the faster you’ll learn and master your code. In short, don’t be afraid to break stuff. Just give it a shot and learn from the result.

When a problem or change needs to be made in the future, the developer then can see what your thought processes were for writing the code you did.

What technology could you not live without?

I could not live without Git. Without it it would be nearly impossible to get any code written and submitted. It’s part of my everyday workflow and even crucial in my hobby projects.

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