14B/ What’s the DIF (F) Decentralized Identity Foundation Explained / Chris K.
Session 14B
What’s the DIF(F)? Decentralized Identity Foundation Explained
Session Convener: Chris Kelly
Notes-taker(s): -
Tags / links to resources / technology discussed, related to this session:
DIF Website - a great place to start
Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:
The Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) is a member-led, not-for-profit organization focused on building foundational technology elements, and working alongside other partner organizations, to deliver an open, standards-based, accessible, and inclusive identity ecosystem.
Our members include a wide cross-section of industry, from large corporate enterprises to individual contributors along with liaison agreements with Governments, Educational institutions, researchers, and associated industry bodies.
Founded in 2017, our mission is to advance the interests of the decentralized identity community, including performing research and development to advance “pre-competitive” technical foundations towards established interoperable, global standards.
DIF is proud to have supported development of two central standards of the decentralized identity industry, the lower-level specifications Verifiable Credentials Data Model and the Decentralized Identifier specification, which are both iterated on, and hosted at the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C). The Foundation is home to a lively and open ecosystem of software companies aligning on everything from product design and UX down to the translation engines and connective tissue to integrate Verifiable Credentials and DIDs into today’s software systems.
The Decentralized Identity Foundation is proud to fulfill a unique role in the digital identity ecosystem by providing an inclusive, transparent community and IPR framework, to expand upon these open-source specifications and deliver other foundational elements which are key to growth, functionality and sustainability of decentralized identity donations, continuation of work, longevity. All work carried out at DIF is available to the wider community under free, open-source licenses: for more information, see DIF FAQ -
