8 Organizations Driving Self-Sovereign Identity Forward

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Introduction

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A major part of the growth of any new technology are the associations, consortias and non-profits helping to bring people together around the topic. Motivated by the progression of the solution and the benefits it can bring to all whilst building framework for things like interoperability.

The concept of self-sovereign identity (SSI) is becoming increasingly common in discussions about how we can improve digital identity and address its many limitations. In this article we explore 8 organizations working to push forward standards, open-source solutions, and collaboration on SSI.

Interested to get more involved in the world of decentralized identity and self-sovereign identiy then here’s a list below of organizations to engage with. Ranging from joining working groups to attending events, use this as your starting point.

Trust Over IP Foundation

Trust Over IP Foundation is a non-profit organization that develops new standards, protocols and frameworks for decentralized trust. It is an open membership organization whose mission is to enable self-sovereign identity. The Trust Over IP Foundation provides the infrastructure for users to control their data and how it's shared with third parties, offering greater security, privacy, and choice over how you share your information online.

The foundation has been in operation since 2018 with more than 500 members globally building out its tools and services.

Sovrin Foundation

The Sovrin Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization that operates the Sovrin Network. It's also a self-sovereign identity network with the goal of building a global public utility for self-sovereign identity, where individuals can control and manage their personal information securely and privately. The organization is built on the MIT open-source distributed ledger technology and uses blockchain technology to create a secure digital identity record.

Hyperledger Foundation

Hyperledger Foundation, a non-profit consortium created by the Linux Foundation in 2017, is working on a wide range of projects. One of these projects is Fabric, which was developed by IBM and Digital Asset to run smart contracts on Hyperledger's permissioned networks. Another project they are working on is Sawtooth Lake—a modular platform for creating scalable and interoperable enterprise blockchains. Here you can find more information about how Hyperledger Labs works with other members to create open-source protocols related to blockchain technology: https://www.hyperledgerlabs.io/

ESSIF-lab

ESSIF-lab is a research lab focused on the evolution of identity management in the digital environment. They’re a non-profit organization based in France, and they work with a wide range of partners, including governments, companies and universities.

The goal of ESSIF-lab is to research how self-sovereign identity could be used to make life easier for people around the world by giving them access to their data, improving how their information is protected online and helping them control their identities instead of relying on third parties like Google or Facebook.

EBSI

The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) was born in 2018 when 29 countries (all EU members states, Norway and Liechtenstein) and the EU Commission have joined forces to create the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP).

EBP’s vision is to leverage blockchain to create cross-border services for public administrations, businesses, citizens and their ecosystems to verify information and make services trustworthy.

Open ID Exchange

The Open ID Exchange is a non-profit organization that provides open-source software, documentation and standards to enable interoperability between different identity solutions. It was formed in 2016 as a community initiative to help accelerate the adoption of open standards for self-sovereign identity.

The OpenID Connect specification defines a standard for how applications can discover, register and obtain information about users. It also specifies how they can request and receive user consent by using access tokens over HTTP/S with SSL (Secure Socket Layer).

W3C

W3C is a standards organization whose mission is to lead the Web to its full potential. The W3C's vision is that all people can benefit from the Web, and that the Web becomes a powerful medium for innovation and economic growth.

W3C hosts most of the world’s leading experts in web technologies and has been responsible for building many of the protocols at the heart of today’s Internet, including HTML, CSS and HTTP/1. They have a specific part focussed on the standards and progress of Decentralized Identity particularly the use of decentralized identifiers (DIDs).

Open Wallet foundation

Open Wallet foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes the use of open-source standards to secure identity. It is a member of the W3C and has been a founding member of the Open Identity Exchange (OIX), as well as being part of the Sovrin Foundation, which aims to create an open-source global public utility for self-sovereign digital identity.

Conclusion

While there are many organizations working to make self-sovereign identity a reality, this is just a handful of the groups that are helping drive forward progress. This is a global issue and everyone is collaborating with each other to create standards and open-source solutions for us all.

We hope you’ve been inspired by the work of these organizations to make self-sovereign identity a reality. We have so much to learn from them, and we’re excited about what they will be doing in the future. The more that people can take control of their own data and identities online, the better off we all will be.

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