Market Adoption of VCs by Fortune 500s (was: Re: DHS Verifier Confidence/Assurance Level Expectation/Treatment of non-publicly defined Vocabulary/Terminology -- by using @vocab)

On Sat, Jan 28, 2023 at 6:10 PM Michael Herman wrote:
> [Kaliya], Your reply misses my point.
> Kim, your reply also misses my point.

I imagine both Kaliya and Kim understand the point you're trying to
make. It seems like you're missing their point(s).

Let me try to go at this from a different angle, not necessarily for
your benefit as I don't think anything I say will convince you, but
for the hundreds of other people on this list that might be new to
this peculiar line of questioning.

A generous interpretation of your questions seem to suggest that
Verifiable Credentials are, in your words, "a niche specification that
is unnecessarily complicated, difficult to implement, and difficult to
program against". Therefore, any sort of profiling of that technology,
such as the DHS is doing would be a futile endeavour. To demonstrate
this, you have requested a demonstration of Fortune 500 companies that
have adopted the "DHS Profile" and then, without waiting for an answer
or doing your own research, asserted your grievances against the
technology.  Some could interpret that as being disingenuous.

Ultimately, the question is premature, as the profile isn't done yet,
but let's look at two of the baseline technologies which the DHS
Profile leans on heavily, which are JSON-LD and Verifiable
Credentials.

As of Jan 2023, JSON-LD is published by 44% of all websites and every
search crawler (Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.) indexes the data:

https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/da-jsonld

That doesn't sound like a niche technology to me... it sounds more
like a significant number of Fortune 500 companies use JSON-LD for a
critical business need (ensuring that their stores , products, and
reviews show up in search engine listings).

The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic
Business and US Customs and Border Protection are signalling VERY
STRONGLY that their future trade facilitation systems, covering
trillions of dollars in commerce and trade, will be using JSON-LD and
Verifiable Credentials. The US Government, Canadian Government, New
Zealand Government, the EU... all not only have active programs using
these technologies, but have noted that adoption is no longer a
question of "if", but when... and I expect you'll see some very public
announcements related to this in 2023.

That does not seem to be a niche usage in the trade / shipping space...

Moving to the retail sector, as you've probably seen via this mailing
list, the National Association of Convenience stores is deploying
Verifiable Credentials for a digital age verification system to
149,000 retail locations across the United States. While it will take
a while to hit scale, there are more than a few Fortune 500s that are
going to be using this system... Anheuser-Busch InBev, Heineken,
Chevron, Casey's General Stores, Exxon, Wawa, Shell, BP America,
QuikTrip, Carlsberg, 7-Eleven, Molson Coors, etc... most on the
Fortune 500, IIRC.

Again, not niche in retail either...

Presuming that the organizations above aren't talking to each other
and attempting to align profiles is also probably not a bet that I'd
make. I know that the retailers and their vendors, many of whom we
work with, are keeping a close eye on the DHS Profile and have a
desire to align closely with it. Remember that many of them fall under
security compliance regimes that tend to follow US government
guidance, and DHS (and NIST) are the entities that are viewed as
authoritative in that area.

I hope this gives you more data related to your "How many Fortune 500
companies are adopting VCs?" question... and this is only the stuff
that we can talk about publicly. There's much more exciting stuff in
flight that I expect will be announced this year, and over the next
several years.

I'll address your "we need a layered Internet Credential architecture"
statement in a separate email.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
News: Digital Bazaar Announces New Case Studies (2021)
https://www.digitalbazaar.com/

Received on Sunday, 29 January 2023 22:32:09 UTC