Hyperledger Global Forum 2021

In January 2021, in accordance with its digital transformation strategy, UNJSPF deployed a solution based on blockchain and biometrics to transform a legacy process with a global reach (70K beneficiaries located in more than 195 countries). The solution offers an alternative to paper-based processes. UNJSPF beneficiaries are required to sign and submit a ‘Certificate of Entitlement,’ or ‘CE,’ every year as a “proof of existence” and proof of country of residence, to continue receiving their benefits. With this ‘Digital CE solution,’ UNJSPF aims to create, verify and secure the digital identities of beneficiaries - while also preventing fraud – using biometrics; identifying their locations with geo-location technology; and storing transactions on an immutable, traceable and independently auditable ledger, using the Hyperledger Indy blockchain platform. The Digital CE solution addresses both technical or business audiences with focus on innovation and technology for social good. This solution was selected as a finalist in Gartner’s Eye on Innovation Awards for Government 2020. It was selected because it demonstrated how emerging technology can be combined to allow the service to be delivered in a completely different way, improving integrity and efficiency.

Lynn will briefly cover some preliminary considerations for building a Hyperledger Indy Network such as determining the scope and purpose, governance considerations, business and financial options, participating stakeholders, potential users, etc. Lynn will then deliver a detailed presentation describing the technical instantiation steps needed to set up a new Indy network. He will begin with describing the physical setup of nodes on a variety of different hosting environments. Next he will provide detailed information on building and sharing the genesis files. Then he will describe what will likely need to occur during the "initial instantiation" meeting where all of the genesis node operators meet to start the network. Lynn will also briefly share open source tools and documents related to the upgrading, monitoring, maintenance, and ongoing use of an Indy network.

Indy and Aries have been designed with strong privacy protection as a foundational principle. In addition to putting personal information under the control of the end users, zero-knowledge and predicate proofs are used to keep users from needing to provide more than the minimum amount of information needed to accomplish their purposes. For example, there is no need for a bartender to know an exact birth date to prove age-based qualification to purchase an alcoholic beverage. Common implementations of age-based qualification depend on an “age” field in a verifiable credential, instead of on the birth date. A better solution is to base the credential on a birth date that is in a human-readable format that is also amenable to being processed by the current predicate proof technology. A demonstration of predicate proofs using such a format for dates, ISO 8601, will be presented.

In this session, Michelle and Nate will provide an overview and demo of Kiva’s use of Hyperledger Aries which allows people to extend existing applications with the capabilities that SSI credentials provide. This software was used for a pilot by the government of Sierra Leone to verify the identities of bank customers and grant access to digital identity wallets held in escrow on their behalf. Our initiative, Kiva Protocol, was awarded the Global Prize for the 2020 World Bank Mission Billion Challenge. This open-source system is available on GitHub and this session will show you how to get started. Kiva Protocol packages together tools out of Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Ursa, and Hyperledger Indy to digitize the civil registry and enable an ecosystem of standards-compliant verifiable credentials.

IDunion is a cross-sector association of 27 partners that is building a production-level infrastructure for verification of identity data in finance, manufacturing, public sector and healthcare. The association addresses demand for migrating centralized identity systems towards decentralized self-sovereign management of digital identities for people, organizations and machines. IDunion has (i) launched an Hyperledger Indy test network, (ii) built components for allocation, verification and management of digital identities and (iii) researched aspects of governance, regulation (eIDAS, GDPR), cybersecurity, interoperability, business models and usability. This presentation will share the outcome, experience and challenges of the IDunion initiative, which might be valuable to guide developers of self-sovereign identity networks and give feedback on Hyperledger Indy/Aries.

When beginning the journey toward decentralized identity deployment, the simpler the system you make, the more likely you are to be successful. In this discussion, Liquid Avatar Technologies and Indicio.tech will share how together they are transitioning the current KABN ID solution to verifiable credentials by building the Liquid Avatar Verifiable Credentials Ecosystem utilizing Hyperledger Aries, Ursa, and Indy. This new system will enable online identity assurance which includes a digital credentials wallet and platform for issuers, verifiers, and individuals. By first focusing a simple deployment of decentralized identity, along with supporting marketing and governance, it allows for an iterative implementation in a controlled credential environment versus the chaos that can ensue when trying to attempt a larger scale roll-out in the early days.

The capacity for users to monitor the custody of their own identifiers and credentials and novel data ownership and governance identity management(IDM) models with built-in control and consent mechanisms can be supported by blockchain technology. In particular, proof of zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) allows for efficient data verification and selective disclosure without exposing it. ZK SNAKRs was applied to cryptocurrency Z-Cash, CL-Signature has been applied to the Hyperledger Fabric INDY project and various DIDs. Our contribution is we modify and implement the ZK-SNAKRs scheme used in Z-Cash for the Hypberledger Fabric. Then, We design and develop the Enhanced-Privacy IDM Framework using the pre-mentioned ZKP. We have implemented and validated ZK-SNAKRs being more efficient in proof verification than CL-Signature in the same environment called Hyperledger.

The Yale Openlab, the Open Earth Foundation and the Verses teams will provide a demonstration of the Open Climate platform efforts, showcasing how distributed ledger technologies (DLT) frameworks, like Hyperledger Indy and Aries, alongside next-gen spatial web protocols can be leveraged to establish nested jurisdictional accounting of climate actions via digital assets. This presentation will continue into a panel discussion around the relevance and application of Hyperledger frameworks in the climate context, including opportunities identified from the Climate Action and Accounting SIG. With verifiable, trusted and context-aware carbon data assets as a core element, the demo will propose and discuss how to achieve interoperability of climate markets and allow cross-jurisdictional trading whilst avoiding double counting.

For the past year, the team at BC Gov and contributors to the Aries CloudAgent Python project have been working to extend the capabilities of the agent software while maintaining flexibility in the face of evolving standards and use cases. Historically, the project has depended heavily on the Hyperledger Indy SDK, but moving forward this dependency is shifting onto a trio of new Hyperledger projects. Indy-VDR (ledger transactions), Indy-Credx (Indy verifiable credentials), and Aries-Askar (secure storage) have all been contributed in the past year and will continue to evolve independently. Supporting multiple backends as well as a family of Aries communication protocols raises interesting design questions for ACA-Py. Andrew will provide a guided tour of its architecture as well as the possibilities made available by this new model.

The need for trusted identity is growing with remote workforce and online government services due to the pandemic and risk of fraud and data leaks. Decentralized verifiable identity meets this need with a strong trust model. Speakers will demo identity proofing and issuance of verifiable credentials to a city resident. Oracle Blockchain Platform (HL Fabric) manages data gathering & audit logging. IdRamp services based on HL Indy/Aries running in the Oracle Cloud ensure interoperability & protect PII. In the demo a resident requests city credentials by scanning physical documents for automated and human verification, then uses their credentials for verified access to a court hearing. Verifiable credentials support universal access to city services and, with self-sovereign approval, can be shared with other jurisdictions, avoiding additional physical proofing and the risk of sharing PII.