WIDE : Web3 Identity Integration for DAOs and Education
WIDE addresses the challenges of market fragmentation and low interoperability for decentralised identity management. WIDE seeks uses decentralised ledger technology (DLT) for secure claim verification and encryption to integrate decentralised identity functionalities with decentralised autonomous organizations (DAOs), along with introducing authorization interfaces that may be more familiar to users of legacy systems. The architecture of WIDE is modular, designed to interact within distinct operational contexts: Issuers, Holders, and Verifiers. WIDE is being developed as an open-source project under the EUPL-1.2 License, emphasising our commitment to transparency and collaborative development.
- Motivation for the project: DAOs lack access to credentials attesting to contributor skills, which are available within the eIDAS trust framework. The WIDE DID-bridge access by individuals and entities in Web3 to these credentials. Since Web3 entities are often curtailed to hiring based on degrees, students and recent graduates are at risk of leaving university with digital credentials that cannot readily be presented to such blockchain-powered communities. Web3 Identities for DAOs and Education (WIDE) addresses this gap for Web3-compatible attestations and legitimises the European Commission's proposal “for amending Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 as regards establishing a framework for a European Digital Identity'' (eIDAS 2.0) by creating an application for the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDIW) envisioned in eIDAS 2.0. To this end, WIDE has forged partnerships with Web3 organisations to test the bridging framework proposed for the facilitation of local meetups and for pseudonymously presenting eligibility criteria for projects.
- Generic use case description: Contributors can present identity and educational credentials to DAOs and educational institutions for exercising governance, participation, and access rights. WIDE will go live with its offering after the prototypes have been furthered into MVPs. In the meantime, WIDE continues to build applications and auxiliary use cases that can contribute to the growth of the WIDE TrustChain platform and enable end-to-end use case delivery in a user-centric approach.
- Essential functionalities: Users can bridge their conventional credentials to an EVM and delegate data access to organisations in Web3.
- How these functionalities can be integrated within the software ecosystem: Ecosystem participants can integrate the DID Bridge APIs to access data and are invited to become a supported network.
- Gap being addressed: Holders, i.e. end-users, currently have to manage a number of different authentication mechanisms used by Verifiers to allow for their credentials to be verified. WIDE proposes a solution to the fragmentation of Holder claims being spread across multiple sources and multiple standards by bridging the gap between the different models. It provides the Holder with the ability to capture and store claims securely from different identity providers remotely, while linking such claims to their Web3 wallet. Furthermore, WIDE aims to provide Verifiers with the option to interact with the Holder via either OAuth or Web3 to ensure future-proofing.
- Expected benefits achieved with the novel technology building blocks: Contributors and institutions receive an add-on for rich and seamless identity data management.
- Potential demonstration scenario: The utility of WIDE is demonstrated in three core scenarios. First, users can onboard their educational credentials lending their claimed expertise credibility. Their credentials are then demonstrated to be useful for joining a local community of crypto enthusiasts. The provable local engagement of users is then demonstrated to be interoperable through WIDE with decentralised Web3 communities, namely DAOs.
Repositories:
GitHub: https://github.com/NGI-TRUSTCHAIN/WIDE
Currently open to the TrustChain community only. Reach out if you need access.
Team
Joshua Ellul
Prof. Joshua Ellul is the director of the Centre for Distributed Ledger Technologies and an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Malta which runs a multidisciplinary Masters in Blockchain and DLT taking in students having backgrounds in law, business, finance, economics, management, ICT and computer science. .
Matthew Scerri
Matthew Scerri is Technology consultant and Software Developer with over 10 years of experience in the emerging technology space, including DLT.
Victoria Kozlova
Victoria Kozlova is UI/UX designer and researcher with background in sociology and linguistics, currently conducting research on underrepresented groups in blockchains.
Ben Biedermann
Ben Biedermann is an expert on decentralised identity and DAO contributor, who focuses on aspects of smallness. He currently reads for a PhD at the University of Malta and is the Project Owner of WIDE.
Entities
L’Università ta’ Malta
The University of Malta has been, over its 400-year history, the hub for international academic exchange in Malta. More recently, it set up the Centre for DLT, which brings together academics from various disciplines to both provide educational offerings as well as undertake interdisciplinary research on Blockchain and DLT.
Website: www.um.edu.mt/dlt
acurraent UG
acurraent is a European innovation agency. It supports small and medium sized enterprises to re-structure, digitalise and expand. acurraent specialises in UX/UI, Web3 research and has experience in the digital identity and compliance sector.
Website: www.acurraent.com
