The EU funded Next Generation Internet (NGI) Atlantic project "Next Generation SSI Standards" and the Walmart funded Jobs for the Future (JFF) Plugfest, both have the same aim of fostering wide scale adoption of Verifiable Credentials. They are doing this by funding global interworking of Verifiable Credentials products from many different suppliers located in Europe, the USA and Asia. The NGI Atlantic project is committed to using the OpenID for Verifiable Credentials (OIDC4VCs) draft standard specifications, whilst JFF is allowing the 30+ participants to decide amongst themselves which protocols to use. Three protocol suites have been chosen: OIDC4VCs, VC-API with CHAPI, and DIDComm.
This presentation will provide an overview of the two projects, will provide an overview of the 3 protocol suites that have been chosen, and will present the results of the interworking trials.
The NGI Atlantic project will finish in December 2022, and besides interworking trials, will deliver an open source test suite that suppliers can use to test their implementations for conformance to the OIDC4VCs protocol suit for both credential issuing and verification. Some tests are being added to the W3C CCG Traceability test suite (written in POSTMAN) and some are being added to the Open ID Foundation's existing OpenID Connect conformance test suite (written in Java).
The JFF Plugfest will finish in 1Q2023. In November 2022 each VC Issuing software supplier must demonstrate the issuing of a verifiable credential to the wallets of at least two different wallet software providers, whilst each wallet software provider must obtain a verifiable credential from at least two other VC Issuing software providers. In February 2023 VC wallets must demonstrate the presentation of a Verifiable Presentation/Verifiable Credential to at least two different verification software suppliers, and each verifier must demonstrate that it is capable of accepting a VP/VC from at least two different wallets.
The success of these projects should catapult the acceptance of inter-workable verifiable credential products to the market.
