Verifiable Credentials for Trade Items

Verifiable Credentials for Trade Items

Tuesday 2G

Convener: Paul Dietrich, Gena Morgan, & Phil Archer (GS1)

Notes-taker(s): Phil Archer

Tags for the session - technology discussed/ideas considered:

Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:

Link provided by Phil Archer to verifiable credentials Slides: http://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Vlt--R5ju2c79vNUvtmNGQK_s4Qnhgx8/edit#

Session is about how we can apply verifiable credentials to ‘trade items’ - products in stores, shipments, etc.

PD (Paul Dietrich) gives brief overview of GS1.

• Want to look at how this emerging tech can impact our members.
• Slide 8 shows the kind of things that consumers want to know about a product
• facts come from different sources now - don’t always want to hear it from the brand
• provenance is always important for products, especially food.
• Slide 9 shows more detail
• Paul asks the group how they see this issue - ‘what do you see?’
• Who is able to make claims about a product? or to present a credential?

Mikhael: Pleased that GS1 is here. You guys are basically a global monopoly - I sell on Amazon. You’re often under the radar - good to see you.

• One crucial piece of info is “what platform has this product been verified on” Amazon approves products, as do others. That’s a potential SEO score. Good. Trust scale can increase.

PD: Some way that retailers can endorse brands.

Mikhael - yes, like Amazon has ‘Amazon Choice’

Gena - we are federated, we’re not one organisation as such, but as a federation, we do ensure uniqueness across the world.

• Not our first IIW - we’re trying to see how this tech can help.

Siva - great initiative on the trade items. Do you also see claims and assertions on the traders themselves? trustworthiness of the buyer and seller?

PD - Yes, for sure we’ll see that. We’ll see a lot of assertions made between the trading partners.

• we see use cases for on-boarding on trade partners. It currently takes many forms, often paper-based. VCs have the potential to make that more streamlined.

Keith - VCs for retailers to access my stock level info. Employees can have access to that.

Karyl - my co. works on DIDs and VCs. We have some customers and partners in the food distribution space. Also expanded to PPE in Covid crisis. Authenticating the vendor is a real issue.

Paul Jackson - who is the holder in this model? Where are the VCs going to be held? And how found?

PD - may get to wallets through the brand, or through registries. It depends where you are in the supply chain. I see wallets being important. But registries too.

Heather V - based on my research... when you talk about the ID of a product on a supply chain, it’s not the same as a person (scribe missed a bit)

• Early upstream, nothing has a barcode yet. So tracking that is hard.
• Asset passports are a poss way forward. An object that will stay the same and change ownership is one thing. Digital Twins are another. Pre-barcode there is a lot of data that needs to be associated with it. A wallet is a non-physical ID representation that data can be associated with. You need the data collected associated with the object accessible in a digital space. The data needs to have fine-grained access rules.

PD - really good insight (scribe apologises for missing some of it).

• Trade items don’t have privacy issues.

Heather - my report is at http://pages.convertkit.com/3ac11986ab/9d3b27d913

Vic Cooper - when you buy an item, there’s a whole chain of connections that are really powerful.

• If I buy, it’s added to my list of things I own, I should be able to use that connection to get support. getting all that different info could start with scanning a barcode. Those connections could create those customer experiences

PD - now is a great time to be exploring that. GS1 is working on creating those links (GS1 Digital Link)

Gena - plugs the demo tomorrow.

Vic - how do you go from a barcode to detailed info. Barcodes are at class level. Not serialized.

Gena - explains more granular IDs, 2D barcodes etc.

PD - there are certain classes of products, like bottled water, that are not serialized. Others - more valuable items - do. Serializing costs money. Paul Jackson - do you see any governments requiring serialization? Things like batch numbers etc.

Gena - talks about pharma now does requires serialization.

• It’s also about cost, as Paul said, but lot level can be important for food recalls.
• We often focus on batch-level info. Mentions the Romain Lettuce example. It could be the basis of targeted recalls. Lot level ID is certainly something that govs and industry are focused on.

PD - back to slides (slide 10)

• we think VCs will be important.
• assertions usually made by an organization. We’re not seeing a lot of cases where the trade items are making assertions (I’m a strawberry and I got too hot today). The content of the claims we see are generally very broad. The vocabulary around that is going to be quite large too.

PD - talks about the W3C VC spec. It says that URIs should, ideally, be resolvable.

• We’ve seen examples of claims using DID-based subjects, others that use domain names as subjects.
• For trade items, we think it makes sense to use Digital Link URIs. It’s a resolvable URI (HTTP). That might then resolve into a set of links.

Guillaume - you said that the DL can be a VC subject. Does the DL contain claims?

PD - the DL is an identifier, it is a URI. It maps a physical label, like a UPC, into a URL. You can map between the GS1 identifier and the URI and vice versa.

• That translation can happen easily enough (see code in GitHub http://github.com/gs1/)

Haiku notes:

Trust products

Through the supply chain

Track and trade

With GS1 barcodes

[I like that, thank you!]

PD - plugs tomorrow’s demo and session on resolvers.

PD - talks through slide 12

PD - talks about GS1 Digital Link a little more, Yes, it does support query strings, but best to use just paths.

Melanie - seeks clarification that id.gs1.org is not the only resolver.

PhilA - emphasizes that there can be any number of resolvers, each is sovereign - see tomorrow.

PD - Talks about the Web vocabulary for describing products.

• gives an example of a term from the GS1 web Voc (http://gs1.org/voc)
• If you’re making claims about products, I recommend that you use our schema.org extension to do this rather than invent your own (if it includes it). reach out to us if there’s something missing.

[Discussion of the GS1 Web voc. Not originally designed for VCs (it’s older) but this is an important use and part of its growing importance at GS1]

Paul Jackson - is it widely used?

[PhilA - talks about mapping between GDSN and the Web voc)

PD - shows slide 14 - an example VC.

• Making use of the GS1 Digital Link URI means that you’re using the IDs already used throughout supply chains.
• It’s resolvable (through a resolver)

[Scribe missed a bit, sorry]

Drummond asked a question about provenance of information Gena - chain of custody info is always important. That can be linked back to understanding that the person who had custody is themselves verified. Gena - things like what are the minimal set of credentials for a supplier? That’s a decision point for the future.

• My understanding is that the governance stack will be important here, maybe the top 2 levels.

Drummond - that’s a terrific use case. And you work in so many supply chains. Having them fit within a governance framework and the Trust over IP Foundation is designed to support exactly that kind of thing. PD - goes back to the VC example. When would you use a DID? We have a GLN to identify a partner? What makes sense in a global supply chain? Drummond - this is so prototypical. I first met the GS1 team about 2.5 years ago and was so pleased to see you.

End of session

Chatlog:

From Guillaume to Everyone: 07:00 PM Hello!

From Gena Morgan to Everyone: 07:01 PM howdy

From Me to Everyone: 07:02 PM Slides are at http://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Vlt--R5ju2c79vNUvtmNGQK_s4Qnhgx8/edit#slide=id.p1

From Drummond Reed to Everyone: 07:09 PM I first met the GS1 team at IIW about 2.5 years ago. They have been a pioneer in figuring out how DIDs and verifiable credentials will work with the global supply chain.

From Nicky Hickman to Everyone: 07:13 PM Does the credential associated with the Thing (product) not follow it's route through the supply chain

From Me to Everyone: 07:15 PM Not necessarily, Nicky. Supply vchains are enormously complex

From Drummond Reed to Everyone: 07:16 PM I believe a classic pattern we’ll see in supply chains is credential registries, where the holder is designed to be a directory available either publicly or to the members of the supply chain who need access to it.

From Nicky Hickman to Everyone: 07:16 PM Does the VC not follow the liabilities expressed in INCOTERMS for example?

From Heather Vescent to Everyone: 07:18 PM Tracking and digital identity on the supply chain: http://pages.convertkit.com/3ac11986ab/9d3b27d913

From Me to Everyone: 07:31 PM And we have open source code for this http://github.com/gs1/

From mitfik to Everyone: 07:33 PM +1

From Gena Morgan to Everyone: 07:35 PM important to understand that the domain could also be the brand example.com/gtin/614141123452

From Nicky Hickman to Everyone: 07:37 PM Could this help with after market care e.g. product recall e.g. exploding fridges, faulty cars.... that's a great use case Have you explored how these resolvers might link with data use in cargo communities & freight forwarding communities eg in a container port system

From Jeffrey Hallett to Everyone: 07:38 PM Are QR Codes equally applicable in this discussion?

From Me to Everyone: 07:38 PM Jeffery - yes. Nicky - maybe we should meet in a garden afterwards?

From Alex Rosen to Everyone: 07:40 PM Are there restrictions on use of things like the vocabulary or is that all open?

From Gena Morgan to Everyone: 07:40 PM It is open

From Me to Everyone: 07:46 PM http://gs1.org/voc