Verifiable Credentials 2.0 now a W3C Standard

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published seven W3C Recommendations, including Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0 as a W3C Standard.

In a release, Seth Dobbs, W3C CEO and president, says “whether the needs are for digital wallets in sectors like Health, Financial Services, Travel, and Education, or whether the needs are for government identities, organization identities, Smart Things identities – all key enablers for society – the VC family of standards is set to enable trusted and privacy-aware digital interactions.”

Verifiable credentials use cryptography, digital signatures and mathematical proofs to check the structural validity of the contents of a set of claims made by an issuer about a subject, so that issuer, holder and verifier all have a consistent mechanism of trust in interpreting transactional data.

The Verifiable Credentials 2.0 specification aims to ease the prototyping of new types of verifiable credentials, while also factoring in privacy-preserving goals.

“Enhancing privacy is a key design feature of this specification. Therefore, it is crucial for entities using this technology to express only the portions of their personas that are appropriate for given situations.”

VC 2.0 incorporates tech from TruAge, Danube, Spruce

A release says TruAge’s core technology has been incorporated into Verifiable Credentials 2.0.

Launched in 2021, TruAge is an age verification product for retail point of sale developed by NACS, the global trade association representing the convenience and fuel retailing industry, and Conexxus, its standards-setting partner.

Says Paul Ziv, TruAge’s vice president of technology and operations, “TruAge was developed to address strong consumer interest in using a trusted and reliable digital ID that combined consumer privacy and ease of use with the potential for mass retail integration – and it has delivered on that promise.”

The product uses encrypted, single-use digital tokens to share only data necessary to confirm the purchaser is of legal age: a driver’s license number, the issuing state, expiration date and date of birth.

TruAge tokens can be embedded into retailer loyalty apps to enable a single scan for age verification. The program is free to convenience retailers, consumers and point-of-sale  providers.

More than 95,000 convenience and fuel retailers in the U.S. are eligible to use TruAge, which scans all U.S. driver’s licenses and is incorporated into the State of California’s mobile driver’s license (mDL) and digital wallet.

Among other organizations incorporating VCs 2.0 are SpruceID, Danube Tech and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

Wayne Chang, CEO of Spruce Systems, calls the v2.0 Recommendation “an important step toward interoperable and privacy‑preserving digital credentials.”

Danube Tech CEO Markus Sabadello says “Verifiable Credentials are a key component in digital identity architectures that are independent of overly powerful central authorities and intermediaries. This technology succeeds at both empowering individuals and solving real business needs.”

And Seungyun Lee, director of standards research for ETRI, says “we welcome the publication of Verifiable Credentials v2.0 as a foundational standard for decentralized and privacy-preserving digital identity. As a research institute actively contributing to W3C and global ICT standardization, we are committed to supporting the adoption and continued evolution of these open standards to help build a secure and trustworthy digital ecosystem.”

Article Topics

Conexxus  |  Danube Tech  |  digital ID  |  Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI)  |  SpruceID  |  standards  |  TruAge  |  verifiable credentials  |  W3C  |  W3C standards