6 minute read

A key piece of the decentralized identity equation is how people, organizations, and devices can be identified and located without centralized systems of identifiers (e.g. email addresses). DIF members are actively working on protocols and implementations that enable creation, resolution, and discovery of decentralized identifiers and names across decentralized systems, like blockchains and distributed ledgers.

About

  • Sam Curren (Indicio), Daniel Buchner (Block), Karyl Fowler (Transmute), Rouven Heck (Consensys Mesh, Executive Director at DIF), Markus Sabadello (DanubeTech) & Kaliya Young (Identity Woman) elected to the DIF steering committee 2022 Decentralized Identity Foundation

    The six elected candidates are Sam Curren (Indicio Tech), Daniel Buchner (Block), Karyl Fowler (Transmute), Rouven Heck (Consensys Mesh, Executive Director at DIF), Markus Sabadello (DanubeTech) & Kaliya Young (Identity Woman). Sam, Karyl, Markus and Rouven have been re-elected for another two year term as SC members. You can read more about the SC candidates’ background and vision for DIF here.

  • Communication Milestone Achievements! 2021-12-03 DIF

    This week, we hit 5k followers on Twitter, driven in no small part by attention garnered by our ToIP & DIF Joint Statement of Support for the Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 specification becoming a W3C Standard. Currently, we stand at 5,011 followers and growing, and we are proud that our comms channels, namely our DIF blog, Twitter and YouTube channel, are a great way to keep on top of important announcements from DIF and our members. We have some exciting stuff cooked up for 2022, so watch this space! 🎉

  • DIF Grant #1: JWS Test Suite 2021-07-22

    DIF announces its first community microgrant, sponsored by Microsoft and rewarding the timely creation of a comprehensive test suite for detached-JWS signatures on Verifiable Credentials

  • Introducing DIF Grants 2021-04-29 Decentralized Identity Foundation

    DIF is kicking off a program to administer narrowly-scoped financial support for community initiatives, ranging in format from grants to more competitive implementation bounties, hackathon-style open collaborations, and security reviews.

  • Drilling down: Co-development 2021-03-30 DIF
    • What “standardization” means to DIF and what DIF means to standardization.
    • A newbie-friendly survey of how DIF relates to nearby organizations with overlapping or related foci.
    • What “co-development” and “coöpetition” really mean, concretely
  • Finding the Bell Curve of Meaning 2020-07-17 Kaliya ‘Identity Woman’ Young, DIF

    As such, we aimed to invite alignment around key words, to find the “bell curve of meaning,” and to invite convergence towards the middle of this curve as a result of our research process. Our hope was to maximize the ability to inform and engage business audiences interested in adopting/purchasing this technology. This meant we would not be setting out to define hundreds of terms; rather, we chose to focus on a subset of the most widely used terms.

Groups

Working groups

Special Interest Groups

Open groups

Interop

  • Interoperability Open Group DIF

    Community collaboration and project management on Interoperability. Develop and publish definitions of success with respect to business interoperability, at the highest level. Defining points of protocol-defined touchpoints for maximum interchangeability of components at every layer; it is assumed that over time, that number will increase, not decrease. Community collaboration and project management on interoperability goal to seek the greatest interoperability in the greater good, not to pick winners. Provide feedback, input documents, members, and guidance to working groups producing standards, specifications, reference implementations and demonstrations hosted by community organizations including but not limited to IETF, W3C, W3C CCG, Hyperledger, Trust over IP.

  • DIF Interoperability Survey

    We are keen to support more interoperability activity and hopefully testing this fall and winter. In order to do this we would like to gather feedback from the community as to where we are at so we can assess how to move forward.

  • Setting Interoperability Targets Part 2 of 2 2021-08-10 DIF

    Having shown in our last piece how interoperability “profiles” are designed, we now tackle some key technical problem areas ripe for this kind of profile-first interoperability work across stacks.

  • Setting Interoperability Targets Part 1 of 2 2021-06-05 DIF

    The Interoperability working group will be tracking them and providing guidance and documentation where possible. Importantly, though, there is a new DIF Working Group coming soon, the Wallet Security WG, which will dive deeper into these profiles and requirements, benefiting from a narrow scope and IPR protection, allowing them to speak more bluntly about the above-mentioned details.

  • Setting Interoperability Targets 2021-04-30 DIF

    Our short-term roadmaps need testable, provable alignment goals that we can all agree on for our little communities and networks of technological thinking to converge gradually. Simply put, we need a few checkpoints and short-term goals, towards which we can all work together.

  • [Video] Tobias Looker on BBS+ use cases, DIF Interop WG 25Nov2020 2020-11-25 Tobias Looker, MATTR, Interop WG
    • Replay attack protection
    • Domain-specific identifiers and proofs
    • New partial-disclosure topographies

Membership

Members

[As of 2023-06-12] DIF members, who share the goal of “building an open source decentralized identity ecosystem for people, organizations, apps, and devices” include: • AffinidiAnonyome LabsArcBlockAuth0Beijing Teleinfo TechnologyBlockchain FoundryBlockchainsBlockpassBlockstack/HiroBloom ProtocolBOTLabs (KILT)BurrataCentreceramiccivicCollaboGateCondatisConsensys MeshCrediveraCU LedgerCybavoCyber SecuriteamDanube TechDiwaladockEarth IDEnterprise Ethereum AllianceextrimianFennel LabsFinemaGen DigitalGenooGS1HederaIBCTID RampiDAKTOiden3Identity.comInfra BlockchainInput OutputInteracIunctaKeylessLitentryMagic Labs Inc.MattrMeecoMetadiumMicrosoftMonokeemyDidNayutaNeosferNest(R)nuggetsNuIDNymlabOneSpanPassiveBoltPing IdentityPolygon LabsPortablProxyQikfoxResiliant Inc.SezooSilence LaboratoriesSphereonSpruce IDSuperlunarSwitchchordTaqanuThe Humanized InternetTorus LabsTransmuteTrinsicTrudentyUNIFY SolutionsUniWorldValidated IDVelocityCareer LabsWeb3 LabsWeBankWorkdayYellowDotPink

Internet Identity Workshop

  • IIW32 - A wave of DIF donations and debuts DIF Newsletter
  • Internet Identity Workshop #33 DIF

    Hundreds of attendees, including a number of DIF members, put together a huge programme of content for the 33rd IIW, covering topics ranging from the technical minutiae of IAM and SSI to big-picture discussions about ethics and strategy, and participated in over 110 virtual sessions across the three days.