GAIN Explained

GAIN (Global Assured Identities Network) is an international collaboration proposed in September 2021 at the European Identity Conference to enable reuse of high-trust identity information across industries. It leverages identity attributes already collected and verified by regulated entities—especially financial institutions, but also national frameworks, government identity services, telecommunications, and others—so individuals can bring verified identity data to relying parties such as employers, service providers, and healthcare providers. The aim is to increase trust in digital identity transactions by ensuring both the person’s claimed credentials and the provenance of identity attributes are trustworthy, within “an overlay network over the internet that consists of accountable participants only.”

GAIN primarily targets CIAM use cases: onboarding/registration, authentication, and password or credential management. Organizations can receive pre-vetted attributes from a user’s identity information provider (IIP) or from a wallet holding verifiable credentials, reducing repeated proofing, lowering friction, and minimizing what relying parties must store. Federated authentication through a bank or telco can shift authenticator management and account recovery away from relying parties—potentially reducing help desk load—while enabling higher assurance and continuous risk assessment.

Privacy and data minimization are emphasized: GAIN can support sharing proofs (e.g., being over 18) without exposing unnecessary data, and could improve cross-border private-data sharing consistency. Users are envisioned to have a privacy dashboard to see what they shared, with whom, by what method, and for what purpose, and to withdraw consent for persistent sharing; responsibility for providing this dashboard remains unclear. Technically, GAIN builds on OpenID Connect (including fine-grained requests and Identity Assurance metadata), offers “join once” network access to participating IIPs, and has demonstrated interoperability across architectures in a 2021 proof-of-concept. The initiative is described as mature conceptually but still forming operationally, with a planned launch target of end-2022 and recommended engagement via whitepaper review and participation in technical, legal, and business streams.

• GAIN stands for Global Assured Identities Network.
• The collaboration was formally proposed in September 2021 at the European Identity Conference (EIC).
• The network is designed to reuse high-trust identity information verified by financial institutions and other regulated industries.
• Identity attributes can be shared directly with relying parties or indirectly via a wallet holding verifiable credentials.
• Federated authentication can be routed through a consumer’s bank or telecommunications operator.
• Fine-grained attribute request capability is currently based on OpenID Connect to support data minimization.
• Relying parties register once with GAIN and must provide proof of organizational validity such as bank attestations or mapping to a Legal Entity Identifier (LEI).
• OpenID Connect Identity Assurance enables transmission of verification-process metadata alongside identity attributes.
• A proof-of-concept interoperability event was demonstrated at the end of 2021 by initial participants.
• The network aimed to launch at the end of 2022.

• “GAIN is an overlay network over the internet that consists of accountable participants only”.
• “Creating a space where only accountable participants interact is a security dream; instead of working with self-attested information from consumers”.
• “The friction associated with conducting identity verification is avoided while still being able to work with verified identity attributes.”
• “Participating in GAIN can change identity verification processes from a cost into a profit center for banks.”
• “This is a unique and valuable proposition because organizations do not have to deal with the questionable quality of self-attested information from users.”
• “If there is a case of persistent sharing that they do not agree with, consent for this can be withdrawn in the privacy dashboard.”
• “Traditional federated options use the same protocol as the GAIN Network … but typically there is no ready-made network.”
• “Joining the network means access to all the identity providers already participating, instead of building individual relationships and agreements.”
• “Work is being done to ensure that GAIN remains technology agnostic, with support for decentralized identity and SSI solutions as identity providers or relying partners as well.”
• “GAIN is a fully formed idea, but not a fully formed solution.”