SSI and verifiable credentials (VCs) have spawned hundreds of startups and significant initiatives within Microsoft, IBM, Workday, Samsung, Deutsche Telekom, the entire EU, the U.S. …

On June 3, 2021 a significant thing happened for SSI (self-sovereign identity): The European Union announced a plan for an EU-wide digital wallet that would support drivers licenses, tax filings, opening bank accounts, prescriptions, academic achievements, seamless travel experiences and proving one’s age to enter a nightclub, among many other possibilities.*

It’s easily the biggest thing to ever happen to SSI, and arguably the biggest to ever happen to identity generally, digital or otherwise.

Read more at my new blog location, here: https://credentialmaster.com/the-eu-announcement-is-the-biggest-ever-in-ssi/

Part 2 of 2: ID Is Only the Beginning.

Achievements, Skills, & Competencies

For many working with SSI and VCs, exchanging achievements is the top-of-mind use case. By achievements, I mean any kind: diplomas, degrees, certificates, skills, skill shapes, competencies, badges, milestones, grades, awards, commendations, micro-credentials, incremental achievements, and others.

Students will eventually share…

Part 1 of 2: Strong, flexible, digital student ID that’s not bound to your campus, network, or vendor.

Full Disclosure: The benefits discussed here apply to self-sovereign student ID generally and are not specific to any vendor or product, and do not result in vendor lock-in; any standards-compliant SSI tools…

This is part 3 of a 3-part series:

Part 1: Verifiable Credentials Aren’t Credentials. They’re Containers.

Part 2: Like Shipping Containers, Verifiable Credentials Will Economically Transform the World

Part 3: How Verifiable Credentials Bridge Trust Domains

TL;DR:

• Most organizations aren’t digitally connected to one another, creating “trust domain” barriers that are slow, manual, and expensive to traverse.
• Similar to…

This is part 2 of a 3-part series:

Part 1: Verifiable Credentials Aren’t Credentials. They’re Containers.

Part 2: Like Shipping Containers, Verifiable Credentials Will Economically Transform the World

Part 3: How Verifiable Credentials Bridge Trust Domains

TL;DR:

• Verifiable Credentials (VCs) aren’t just functionally similar to shipping containers, they are economically similar as well, and will bring an explosion in…

This is part 1 of a 3-part series:

Part 1: Verifiable Credentials Aren’t Credentials. They’re Containers.

Part 2: Like Shipping Containers, Verifiable Credentials Will Economically Transform the World

Part 3: How Verifiable Credentials Bridge Trust Domains

TL;DR:

• Verifiable Credentials (VCs) aren’t actually credentials, they’re containers, like shipping containers for data.
• Having containers inside of containers is a feature, not…

After possibly thousands of conversations about SSI over the last five years, I’ve tried just about everything to help people quickly understand it. Early on it would take hours. Seriously. We just didn’t have the terminology or the useful analogies or frankly, the understanding, to be more concise. Then it…