Hyperledger Global Forum 2021

In early 2018, we wrote this explainer(1) on “traversing the web of trust”, a process that a verifier receiving a verifiable credential presentation uses to decide if they sufficiently “trust” the issuer of the credential to complete a transaction. The cryptography part of verifying the presentation is relatively easy, but deciding if the issuer can be trusted gets into the messy world of human trust. For example, how does an airline checking in passengers know if they can trust the presentation of a COVID-19 vaccination verifiable credential? We’ll go over the “web of trust” concept and survey the central and decentralized mechanisms that are in place now and are planned using Hyperledger Aries to help verifiers make trust decisions about the verifiable presentations they receive. (1) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nYq0iakgtyC21oUGWa5hLuJUoKeJFpURtGz6HcLIltY/edit?usp=sharing