Re: What are VCs similar to?

Steve et. al. - You’re right that the non-techie audience, who are savvy about many things, just not the tech space, do have trouble seeing the value proposition afforded by VCs. In part that’s because it has never been possible before to have a trustable assertion without doing the background checking. Hence, the costs associated with that process are largely built into existing business models. Change business practices is itself costly, even if it delivers savings after implementation is achieved. And it opens up other possibilities for rethinking the verification process for other practices which will be ’new’ to most. 

A team lead by the Learning Economy Foundation, of which I’m a part, has some funding to look at the protocol and standards landscape of the VC ecosystem specifically with the intention of building a visual of the landscape and then a layman’s guide to the status of the relevant protocols with, hopefully, some recommendations for the place to start with VCs for basic use cases such as issuing a certificate for completion of a credential (education/training). Or, to create self-asserted skills that can be endorsed through the VC native Open Badge VC that this group heard Kerri Lemoie present a month or so ago.

We could use any advice, suggestions and feedback on the emerging protocol landscape for issuing and presenting VCs. We’d be happy to share what we gather for feedback and suggestions after our first phase of data collection (a limited survey) is reviewed and summarized.

I like the passport chip analogy, as well! 

Cheers,
 Phil

Phillip Long, Ph.D., 
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> On Aug 23, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Steve Capell <steve.capell@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Also a good analogy.  Probably depends on your intended audience 
> 
> - a tech audience will most likely understand and appreciate the x.509 analogy
> - but a business / policy audience will give you a blank stare if you say “it’s just like x.509”.  I think the passport chip is a better story for the non tech audience 
> 
> I may venture to suggest that the biggest problem I’ve faced (and probably this group faces) is not convincing tech savvy people - but rather getting business / policy people to understand the benefits to the extent that they will allocate budget to projects so they can realise that benefit 
> 
> I still struggle with this - almost every day 
> 
> Steven Capell
> Mob: 0410 437854
> 
>> On 23 Aug 2021, at 9:03 pm, Henry Story <henry.story@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 23. Aug 2021, at 11:49, Michael Herman (Trusted Digital Web) <mwherman@parallelspace.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> If you assume a simple definition of a Verifiable Credentials platform as a set of data models and protocols for creating and verifying verifiable data packets and their exchange between 2 or more software agents (don't get hung up on the specific wording), what existing protocols/platform standards, in your mind, are the most similar to VCs (at a top-level)?
>>> - DNS?
>>> - TCP packets?
>>> - SOAP messages?
>>> - something else?
>> 
>> X509 Certificates (with 40 years of tech improvements added to them).
>> 
>> A Verifiable Claim is just a signed content, and the big leap of VC stack is that
>> it is built on well defined, open, extensible logics. 
>> 
>> Henry
>> 
>>> 
>>> Michael Herman
>>> 
>>> Get Outlook for Android
>> 
>> 
>