Co-authored by Stephan Wolf, CEO of GLEIF. Thanks to the dozens of smart people who contributed their time and insights. Part 1 described the first component of Organizational Identity (OI): identifiers. Part 2 describes the second component of OI — organizational credentials — the things that bring OI its most…

The kind organizations will require. — The current Verifiable Credentials (VCs) data model originated in 2017, when it was called “Verifiable Claims”. There have been many sustaining innovations since that time but none disruptive¹ until now, for a new field of application for VCs: Organizational Identity (OI). In The Dawn of Organizational Identity, Part 2: Credentials…

Co-authored by Stephan Wolf, CEO of GLEIF, and Karla McKenna, Head of Standards for GLEIF. In 2014, through its Financial Stability Board (FSB), the G20 carried out one of its decisions from the aftermath of the 2008 Financial Crisis: it formed GLEIF, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation. GLEIF is…

Thanks to Stephan Wolf, CEO of GLEIF, who co-authored this article, and to Karla McKenna, Managing Director at GLEIF Americas, who contributed significantly, and to dozens of other smart people who contributed their time and insights. Organizational Identity (OI) Defined: The ability of a person or thing to prove their authority to represent an…

My business partner at Digital Trust Ventures, Dr. Samuel Smith, happens to be the smartest human I’ve met, and through my line of work I’ve been fortunate to meet some smart ones. In an email exchange during the last 72 hours, Sam opined about the McKinsey Technology Trends Report for…

Last week I published “Web3, Web5, & SSI” which argued “why the SSI community should escape Web3 and follow Jack Dorsey and Block into a Web5 big tent, with a common singular goal: the autonomous control of authentic data and relationships”. In this short post I’m proposing a definition for…

Why the SSI community should escape Web3 and follow Jack Dorsey and Block into a Web5 big tent, with a common singular goal: the autonomous control of authentic data and relationships. TL;DR As a ten-year veteran of the SSI space, my initial reaction to Jack Dorsey’s (Block’s) announcement of Web5 —…

Last summer I published a 3-part series about the similarities between verifiable credentials (VCs) and physical shipping containers: 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 The similarities have only become more apparent, and important, now that VCs are rapidly growing in global adoption. So it’s time for an update, including some history behind the VC name and why “verifiable” is also problematic.

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. …