Information

Why the issuer-holder-verifier paradigm of VCs isn't enough for cross-border trade
  • Past
  • Confirmed
  • Breakout Sessions

Meeting

Event details

Date:
– Japan Standard Time
Status:
Confirmed
Location:
Floor 5 - 505
Participants:
Joe Andrieu, Phil Archer, Pierre-Antoine Champin, Denken Chen, Stephen Curran, Tommaso De Orchi, Kevin Dean, Michael Ficarra, Sam Goto, Alexis Hancock, Fershad Irani, Jay Kishigami, Eiji Kitamura, Emil Lundberg, Ivan Marin Santamaria, Natalia Markoborodova, Will Morgan, Vinod Panicker, Hiroyuki Sano, Amir Sharif, Manu Sporny, Sami Tikkala, Kohei Watanabe, Rigo Wenning, Elaine Wooton, Dan Yamamoto, Benjamin Young, Paul Ziv, Brent Zundel
Big meeting:
TPAC 2025 (Calendar)

Ask anyone for the use cases for Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials and you'll be told about driving licences, university degrees and digital identities, all of which are variations on a theme of an authority issuing a credential to an individual who uses it to make a verifiable presentation to some relying party in a way that preserves their privacy. Those are solid use cases. But the trade use case differs significantly.

An example: there’s no way an exporter in Australia would make a verifiable presentation to China customs. Instead the exporter needs to be able to link their GS1 shipment identifier, itself part of a chain, and their verifiable Australia Business Number to their DID. Then the exporter issues a commercial invoice as a VC. The importer gets the VC and passes it to their broker who includes it with the customs import declaration. Then China customs verifies the invoice VC, resolves the issuer DID to find the vABN, and confirms that the subject did of the vABN VC and the GS1 VC is the same as the issuer DID of the invoice VC.

There may be other technical ways to achieve this traversal of “verifiable linked data” (IETF ACDC perhaps) but a more general method of verifying what is in effect a trust graph is needed. It requires a method to link VCs in a way that generic verification software can check multiple VCs that will be issued by completely unrelated organizations with no business relationship, all to prove that the data being presented has multiple roots of trust.

In this session, Steve Capell from Pyx, lead author of the UN Transparency Protocol at UNECE and Phil Archer from GS1, who co-chairs the Verifiable Credentials Working Group with Brent Zundel, explore what's needed for trade. They will be joined by Ivan Marin from the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF).

Agenda

Chairs:
Phil Archer

Description:
Ask anyone for the use cases for Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials and you'll be told about driving licences, university degrees and digital identities, all of which are variations on a theme of an authority issuing a credential to an individual who uses it to make a verifiable presentation to some relying party in a way that preserves their privacy. Those are solid use cases. But the trade use case differs significantly.

An example: there’s no way an exporter in Australia would make a verifiable presentation to China customs. Instead the exporter needs to be able to link their GS1 shipment identifier, itself part of a chain, and their verifiable Australia Business Number to their DID. Then the exporter issues a commercial invoice as a VC. The importer gets the VC and passes it to their broker who includes it with the customs import declaration. Then China customs verifies the invoice VC, resolves the issuer DID to find the vABN, and confirms that the subject did of the vABN VC and the GS1 VC is the same as the issuer DID of the invoice VC.

There may be other technical ways to achieve this traversal of “verifiable linked data” (IETF ACDC perhaps) but a more general method of verifying what is in effect a trust graph is needed. It requires a method to link VCs in a way that generic verification software can check multiple VCs that will be issued by completely unrelated organizations with no business relationship, all to prove that the data being presented has multiple roots of trust.

In this session, Steve Capell from Pyx, lead author of the UN Transparency Protocol at UNECE and Phil Archer from GS1, who co-chairs the Verifiable Credentials Working Group with Brent Zundel, explore what's needed for trade. They will be joined by Ivan Marin from the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF).

Goal(s):
Gather input towards a possible new charter for the VCWG

Agenda:

  • Introduction & welcome, Phil Archer, GS1
  • Why trusted graphs are needed for trade, especially cross-border trade, Steve Capell, Pyx/UNECE
  • ACDC as a possible solution, Ivan Marin, GLEIF
  • Discussion

Slides

Ivan Marin slides

Materials:

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