Call for Participation in Passkey Document Signing Community Group
The Passkey Document Signing Community Group has been launched:
The mission of this group is to bring legally meaningful, cryptographically verifiable digital signatures to the Web.
Although the Web has historically lacked primitives for digitally signing documents, widespread adoption of passkeys creates new opportunities, while regulatory and market demand for digital signatures continues to grow. For example, a business signing a contract today typically relies on an emailed link and ad hoc identity verification; a citizen seeking a qualified electronic signature under regulations such as eIDAS typically must verify their identity, at cost, with each new signing provider they use.
Prior research found that closing this gap requires no new cryptography: every needed building block already exists, but has not been composed into an open, interoperable whole. This group intends to develop that composition with security as a first-order concern, combining a small number of building blocks into a signing ceremony, an evidence format any third party can verify independently, and a way to express the resulting signature’s legal strength.
The group expects to build on WebAuthn, OpenID4VP/the Digital Credentials API, CAdES/PAdES/JAdES, the CSC API, and RFC 3161 as-is. In particular, the group expects to build upon the signing extension under discussion in the Web Authentication Working Group. The group will not define new cryptography or authenticator behavior.
This group intends to publish one or more Specifications, and may produce supporting test suites, use-case documentation, and other material.
In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account. Please note, however, that W3C Membership is not required to join a Community Group.
This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2026-08-09 by Mohammed Zakari. The following people supported its creation: Kyle Simpson, Michael Suzuki, Mohammed Zakari, Mubarak Awal and Anup Sah. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.
The group must now choose a chair. Read more about how to get started in a new group and good practice for running a group.
We invite you to share news of this new group on social media and other channels.
If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please email us at site-comments@w3.org
Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team
