Progressive Use Cases for Gordian Envelopes

We have released a new set of progressive Use Cases for Gordian Envelopes,
along with offering brief solutions of how the challenges in each Use Case
can be solved using our architecture.

Even if you are not planning to use Gordian Envelopes, *you'll likely find
by looking at them that our approach to privacy challenges is useful in
defining privacy requirements for your own architectures.*

These Use Cases documents detail how Gordian Envelopes can be used in the
Educational industry, the Software industry, the Financial industry, and
others.

   -
   https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Gordian/blob/master/Docs/Envelope-Use-Cases.md

Some of the most interesting use cases that the CCG community might find
interesting can be found in the Educational Industry category. These
examples there focus on avoiding discrimination.

Gordian Envelopes can elide specific information, such as names, that might
be prejudicial while maintaining their validity. This use case demonstrates
how educational institutions can maintain the privacy and security of
student data while ensuring that third parties can only access the
information they are authorized to view.

Gordian Envelope does this by eliding specific information without
invalidating the signature, which allows different parties, such as
employers or regulators, to access only the information they need for their
specific purposes while still preserving the privacy and security of the
rest of the data. Furthermore, as these parties are now "holders," they can
further elide when sharing with their business partners.

   -
   https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Gordian/blob/master/Docs/Envelope-Use-Cases-Educational.md

One of our other software use cases talks about how to release software
while maintaining anonymity, building on the famous Amira Engagement Model
published at #RWOT.

   -
   https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Gordian/blob/master/Docs/Envelope-Use-Cases-Software.md#anonymous-signing

We also offer a use case leveraging Shamir's Secret Sharing and multiple
permits to increase the resilience of key storage storage.

   -
   https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Gordian/blob/master/Docs/Envelope-Use-Cases-Assets.md#part-two-raising-resilience-of-restricted-results

The common thread among the use cases for Gordian Envelopes is when you
have a diversity of individuals, groups, or organizations with different
needs, business requirements, legal requirements, and risk-management
requirements, and in particular, when these parties cross jurisdictional
borders or have specific risks to human rights or from uncooperative
governments.

If you'd like to know about Gordian Envelopes, they are a specification for
a privacy-focused solution for the transmission and storage of complex data
structures. Gordian Envelopes use a hashed Merkle Tree to provide privacy
features and allow for the elision, encryption, or external reference of
certain parts of the envelope. This enables access to only certain parts of
the envelope for specific recipients while still maintaining the security
and privacy of the rest of the data.

Here is an introduction:

   -
   https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Gordian/blob/master/Docs/Envelope-Intro.md

-- Christopher Allen