[MINUTES] CCG Weekly 2025-07-01

CCG Weekly Meeting Summary - 2025/07/01

*Topics Covered:*

   -

   *Introductions and Announcements:* Several attendees introduced
   themselves, including Steve Capell (presenting on UN/CEFACT's UNTP
   initiative) and Tzviya Siegman (W3C Sustainability Lead). Cancellation of
   several weekly calls due to GDC and the US July 4th holiday were announced.
   Manu Sporny announced a call for adoption for the verifiable credentials
   over wireless specification.
   -

   *UN/CEFACT's UNTP Initiative:* Steve Capell presented UN/CEFACT's
   Universal Network for Product Traceability (UNTP) initiative, focusing on
   adding trust to sustainability claims in international trade. Key points
   included:
   - The enormous scale and complexity of international trade ($25 trillion
      annually, significant costs due to tariffs and non-tariff
barriers, illicit
      trade).
      - UNTP aims to reduce costs, combat illicit trade, and support
      sustainable practices by enabling verifiable and traceable sustainability
      claims throughout global supply chains.
      - The project emphasizes a "protocol over platform" approach, using
      verifiable credentials and linked data to ensure interoperability across
      different systems.
      - UNTP addresses the challenge of multi-party verification in supply
      chains, where a document might pass through numerous hands before
      verification.
      - The initiative focuses on creating a common core data model with an
      extension mechanism to accommodate industry-specific needs.
      - UNTP's architecture relies on verifiable links between different
      credentials, requiring robust identity verification and secure
data access
      mechanisms for parties who may not be known in advance.
      - The initiative is gaining traction with major industry groups like
      the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) and the Global Battery Alliance.
      - UNTP is expected to be endorsed as a UN recommendation.
   -

   *Discussion and Q&A:* The discussion focused on how the W3C community
   could contribute to UNTP's success. Specific points raised included:
   standardizing rendering methods for verifiable credentials, providing
   clearer guidance on DID methods, exploring best practices for verifying
   linked data graphs, and improving communication around the business value
   proposition of verifiable credentials. The need for selective redaction
   (rather than selective disclosure) in supply chain contexts was also
   highlighted.

Text: https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-ccg-ccg-weekly-2025-07-01.md

Video: https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-ccg-ccg-weekly-2025-07-01.mp4
*CCG Weekly - 2025/07/01 11:58 EDT - Transcript* *Attendees*

Alex Higuera, Benjamin Young, Chandima Cumaranatunge, Erica Connell, Greg
Bernstein, Harrison Tang, Hiroyuki Sano, Jennie Meier, Kayode Ezike, Leo
Sorokin, Mahmoud Alkhraishi, Manu Sporny, Parth Bhatt, Rob Padula, steve
capell, Ted Thibodeau Jr, Tzviya Siegman, Vanessa Xu, Will Abramson,
WILLIAM SLUSHER
*Transcript*

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: We're going to give everybody till 12:05 before we get
started and then we'll kick off.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: All right, let's get started. thank you everyone for
joining us today on July 1st. It's Canada Day, so happy Canada Day to all
of you coming joining us from Canada. so welcome to everybody new joining
us. As a note, we have a code of conduct. We would love it if you can
follow that code of conduct. If you'd like to see more or read more about
it, you can find it on our CCG website. We also have an IPR note. If you
are attending this meeting and if you are providing substantive
contributions, please make sure that you have signed that note. is there
anybody new on the call who would like to introduce themselves or anybody
who, used to join us a while ago, hasn't been here for a while, wants to
reintroduce himself.

steve capell: I suppose I haven't joined this call before. Steve Capel
here. I've been invited to join today to present some UN stuff.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Yeah. and…

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Steve will have a whole segment for but welcome and
we're very happy to have you will your video's on but you're muted. I'm not
sure if that's intended.

Will Abramson: attendance. I just want to say hello. I'm not going to stay
for the whole call. Sorry, Steve. I'm just saying hi. I want to say few
words. if that's all right, if you don't mind. First, I appreciate you
guys. I just had a amazing weekend at Glastonbury. So, I'm just sharing
some love and appreciation. I think this is the wicked community. if you
didn't join us for what did great water cooler sessions competation. I
would really recommend it next time. It's a bit daunting at first. I get
that. I also don't like Not always this talkative. but you will enjoy It'
be nice for you to meet some more of the community and just say hello.
00:05:00

Will Abramson: yeah, I got a few ideas that I would love to share with the
community over the coming week, but we'll leave that for now. I will say a
couple other things. I was at kneecap. I was at the front. I don't know
what you guys have heard about it or heard in the news. it's crazy how much
the reality gets distorted. If I can say one thing, I would recommend every
single one on this call take an hour of their lives to watch that set. It's
available on the It's worth every second of your time. I promise you. And
even if you don't want to do it, we watch the first five minutes. that's
all I will say about that. The last thing I'll say is I finally got around
to getting myself a distribution point. Like I realized I'm a bit of a
hoarder with my writing. I often write things for myself, right? Writing
writing is good for thinking.

Will Abramson: But I've got a distribution point now. So, if you want to
follow anything that I say across a number of different aliases that I've
been writing over a few years, you can find me on Substack. My name is I'm
whip. Hi. yeah. So, follow me there. The last thing I'll say is on that
substag there is a thread that I've just been chucking some thought on some
pictures of the GDC conference which I'm at which is actually pretty cool.
yeah. Yeah, I'll share a link. That's a good idea. it's huge this absolute
monster of a venue. So yes, how do I get the chat? Yes, here we go.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Okay. …

Will Abramson: So yeah, you can find me have a great call. Sorry, thanks
for coming on to talk to us. See you later. Thanks, Famood. Bye.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: thank you Will and sorry you can't be here for the
phone call. and there is his substack. All right. we had someone on Q.
Would you like to introduce yourself?

Tzviya Siegman: Yeah, I'm SA Z Sigman. I have not been on this call in
probably more than a year. I am the sustainability lead for W3C. I also
wrote the code of conduct. so if you have any questions about that, you can
ask me. and I also work on the member relations for North America. so, I
heard your talk, Steve, at the AC meeting, and I thought it would be great,
from a sustainability perspective for me to join.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you for joining us. That's absolutely wonderful.
does anybody else want to introduce themselves? Anyone want to say hi? All
right. Do we have any announcements anybody would like to share with the
broader group? I know there are some call cancellations that are happening
this week. Mano, do you want to update the group on it?

Manu Sporny: Yeah. we normally have the verifiable credential API call. we
have the incubation promotion call and the data integrity call. those are
all cancelled this week primarily because GDC is going on right now where
Steve currently is. and we've got a number of people attending. and then
this Friday is July 4th US holiday. so we won't be having the data
integrity call. we will be starting up all of those calls the following
week. so if you're interested in any of the technologies that this group is
incubating, please join us.

Manu Sporny: I'll also be sending out a new call for adoption for the
verifiable credentials over wireless specification. We're looking for
people to sponsor that specification. This is for transmission of
verifiable credentials over short range fire wireless like NFC or
Bluetooth. So, we'll start that request for support over the next week or
so. get some feedback over the next couple of weeks and if we get enough
people supporting that work we'll kind of try to make it a work item in
this group. that's it from the work item calls. Thanks Muhammad.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you, Does anyone else have any announcements they
would like to share? All right. Steve, would you mind introducing yourself
and then walking us through what you want to share? Thank you for joining
us.
00:10:00

steve capell: Hang on, let me go off mute. There we are. yeah, so my name
is Steve Capel. I'm run a small business in Cber, Australia that the
services government, but that's got very little to do with my engagement
with verifiable credentials and the UN because I have a voluntary position
at an organization called UNCFACT, which is a standards body that has done
digital standards for crossber trade for decades now, even going back pre-
internet, the edifact era. and I'm here today as Manu said at the GDC.
We've just come off the stage and I thought I might share with you before
we get into the broader context of international trade and where UNP fits
in. So with your permit, how long have I got by the way your …

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: You have 50 minutes. You have till 1

steve capell: We have plenty of time for chat then. Let me start though
with the presentation I just gave.

steve capell: a few minutes ago at GDC called a peer into the future of
verifiable trade and I know crossber trade is a domain that isn't really I
mean in some cases it's right at the center of VC discussion but it's a
little bit different I think to some of the common VC patterns but I'll
just start with a kind of big picture of some of the numbers so the toal
value of international trade in one year is 25 trillion roughly. and that's
value measured as value of goods at the point they're ready to export.
That's what FOB exports means free on board exports. and those that 25
trillion of value is exchanged between about 10 million trading businesses
which is about 10% of the world's businesses is about 100 million.

steve capell: and they moved about 10 billion tons of cargo in about two
billion separate consignments between about 100,000 uniquely identified
from two locations essentially they call loc and airports so it's big
business basically but it's also complicated so adding to that 25 trillion
is a thing called cost of trade there's actually quite detailed metrics on
that from the world bank and UNSCAP and it comprises

steve capell: it's broken down into a few categories and I've simplified it
here but one chunk is tariffs hot topic at the moment and that two trillion
number may well go up but it's surprisingly low when you think about it
most people think that cost of trade is all about tariffs there's another
six trillion of transport and logistics and then the biggest number
actually surprisingly is the non-tariff barriers and it's not just customs
there's a whole everything associated financial insurance, customs
processes, phyto sanitan, all the stuff about getting goods across a
border. So, it actually costs more to hop across a border than it does to
get to the border. so this is a big burden on the global economy that's
crossed to On top of that, there's illicit trade, which has a few different
formats, right? One is fake goods, counterfeits. another one is tariff
evasion.

steve capell: So that's under declaring the value of your goods to avoid
tariffs which is very damaging for genuine traders who are paying full
tariffs because they go out of business when competing with illegit traders
that are escaping tariffs. And then there's smuggling. So this is not
declared at all. And the most common vector for smuggling is something
called piggybacking which is basically pretending to be someone you're not.
If you want to get a certain white powder into the country, you do usually
hide it in a legitimate shipment or something that's pretending to be a
legitimate shipment. Then another whole interesting dimension of crossber
trade is trade finance. So if you think about when you buy and sell goods
within one legal boundary, if somebody doesn't pay you, you can take them
to small or big claims court.

steve capell: But when you're buying and selling stuff across borders and
the buyer in the other country doesn't pay you, it's more challenging.
Right? So, both for cash flow finance purposes and for guarantee of payment
purposes, there's a very big industry called documentary letters of credit
and trade finance. And roughly 80% by value of all international trade is
trade finance. some of it doesn't need trade finance. it's trade between
friendlies. and a surprisingly large chunk of it 3 trillion there is
finance that is requested by a trading entity and available from a lending
bank but not granted and mostly not granted because of lack of integrity of
documents I'm not sure that invoice is really right or identity is it
really you and overwhelmingly that trade finance gap impacts small and
medium business so it presents a big barrier to entry for small and medium
business and they basically
00:15:00

steve capell: have a choice then either don't trade trade at risk. And then
the last bit and this is where UNP comes in is the emerging world of
sustainability concerns and the tariff and non-tariff barriers associated
with that. Right? So for example the European Union has a regulation called
EU deforestation regulation which bans all products of wood, timber,
soybean farming products, beef, lots of stuff that have touched a property
that has been deforested since 2020. Yeah. and it's a complete market
access ban. and on top of that there's due diligence regulation.

steve capell: US has some regulation like the DoddFranks act about and the
forced labor region act and then on top of that of course there's the whole
world of emerging carbon tariffs at borders and basically all these things
are going to increase the cost of trade but also the value of goods that
can genuinely claim to meet these environmental criteria and as soon as the
value of the thing goes up so does the incentive to cheat right so if we're
actually going to achieve a sustainable transition, these sustainability
claims need to be trusted and verifiable. that's where UNP comes in. But UN
is just this right-hand box on this general question of trade. Little fun
fact, if you add up all the bits of paper, and it is overwhelmingly paper
in crossber trade documentation, and that's not because things can't be
digitized, it's because of trust.

steve capell: but there's a much more paper for a crossber trade than there
is for a domestic trade. so on average 12 paper documents multiple pages
each and multiple copies for each of those two billion consignments and if
you just do some numbers it's roughly 15 million trees per year. if
crossber trade can be supported by digitally verifiable trader identity
that must work across borders. This is a key idea or key criteria right
customs really would love to know who packed the box but obviously who
packed the box is somebody in another country. so you got to trust the
other count's identity regimes and that other count's identity framework
needs to be interoperable across borders and on top of that digitally
verifiable trade documents and data.

steve capell: put those two together and do it at scale and you're
potentially aiding up to $2 trillion of cost of trade, reducing illicit
trade, especially tariff invasion and supporting a lot of small businesses
to get into trade that wouldn't have done before roughly $2 trillion of
additional trade and then protecting the value of genuinely sustainable
goods against unfair competition and therefore supporting the sustainable
transition. So these are big numbers, right? I'm just putting this slide
here because that was really the emphasis I wanted to make in the GDC here.
Tomorrow we'll be moving on to that's nice but how do you do it? but it's
just important I think to understand the scale of this and the
opportunities.

steve capell: what one other comment I'd make is that here at GDC as well
there are a lot of architecture diagrams and a lot of different standards
whether it's ISO MDL or SD jot or verifiable credentials or whatever but
pretty much every diagram had a r a holder with a wallet and a verifier. in
crossber trade there is a pattern where a document issued by somebody
temporarily well issued on logically to a subject gets handed off five or
six times before it reaches a verifier that really cares. So one classic
example that's increasingly important because of tariffs is something
called a certificate of origin.

steve capell: It's a document that attests to the origin rules to be in
order to access the concessions under a free trade agreement. And that is
typically issued by a chamber of commerce. so that's the issuer to a
exporter. That's the sort of initial subject. But that document then would
be given by the exporter to the freight forwarder who would pass it on with
the goods through intermediate countries to an importer who then would
typically give it to his customs broker who would then present it to the
importing customs authority who is the one that really needs to verify it
in order to grant preferential trade terms. And along the way they may well
give it to a bank for trade finance as well.

steve capell: That's one of the typical documents that's needed for a
documentary legend of credit. So, you've got an issuer, you've got a
ostensible holder, but then five or six parties and very often the subject
of the credential doesn't even know who is going to verify it, So, there
isn't a concept here of somebody holding a credential in a wallet,
presenting it to someone who's asked for evidence. It's really more like
someone five or six steps away that you don't even know wants to verify the
document. So international trade is more about verifying let's call it
verifiable link data graphs a bundle of credentials and following
identifiers across them and looking for verifiable links for example a
certificate is genuine but it was also issued by a party who is accredited
by an accredititation authority an invoice is issued but it's also got
associated with a digital identity credential that attests the identity of
that invoice issuer but yeah so
00:20:00

steve capell: It's a slightly different pattern. I think it's important to
bear in mind. So was today's presentation. I don't know if that was
helpful. what I could do now is jump just straight into that lefth hand box
of UNP or could potentially briefly talk about crossber trade more
generally rather than just sustainability stuff.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: I think UNTP would be a better venue to go to.

steve capell: Where would you like me to go? All right, let's do that so
what I'll do for that is walk you through a website. That way if you go to
find it yourself, you'll know what you're looking at, So if you Google UNP,
you'll typically get this is the first hit. it's basically a docu site
generated from GitHub. And, I'll walk through a few pages.

steve capell: There's a lot here but the core concepts what is UNP first of
all it's about as I said adding trust to sustainability claims so that the
value of the products that are associated with that claim is retained and
let's call it a virtuous circle of hard to fake claims consumer confidence
improves higher prices are justified and business is motivated to compete
on the quality of claims right I would say that's an aspiration and where
we are at the moment is that roughly 60% of all so-called sustainability
claims on products are fall into the greenwashing category. it's a huge
proportion and that's because sustainability has largely been the
providence of the marketing department. Right?

steve capell: So, you buy clothes and it's got big letters on it that says
something like recycled and when you read the fine print it'll say recycled
packaging. it's true but it's misleading that still cladifi falls in the
greenwashing category right and so UNP is really about adding confidence to
sustainability claims and tracing goods and so here's a picture that kind
of gives you an idea of the scope right so a typical value chain obviously
starts from stuff that you either grow on the ground or dig up out of the
ground and goes through all these steps of primary processing component
production

steve capell: assembly, market placement, ongoing use and then repair and
recycle. and along the way, you've got facilities that have sustainability
characteristics about the facility. this is the carbon footprint of a farm,
for example. And you got products made by those facilities, which are
composed of inputs from the previous facility, and on the top here, you've
got all sort of higher integrity evidence about the quality of these
claims. This is the kind of scope of the problem of UNP. How do you for
example assess a product and be confident of its material origin?

steve capell: the big case recently with we just found out that half of the
stuff that we put in cars has requires raw earths which are input
components to magnets and magnets are in motors and one country happens to
be a major supplier and if it shuts the doors after the world's automotive
industry stops right so this idea of really understanding where things come
from what the qualities of those components is becoming increasingly
important that's kind of business concept of what UNP is about. so I'll go
straight to a page which is in here talks about the very high level
requirements. Here's a kind of conceptual architecture of the components of
UNP. I hope you can see that well enough. So right at the center there is
the data.

steve capell: so for example a product passport is a little data structure
bit like an invoice or anything else that describes the sustainability
characteristics of a product. The little padlock symbol indicates that is
issued as a verifiable credential. equally important to product claims is
facility claims. Like I said a lot of sustainability performance is not at
the product level it's at the facility level. and then alongside that is
digital conformity credential. So if you like the green stuff is issued by
the party that is making that typically manufactures the product operates
the facility. so it's an ambic claim. It's just a statement that says I
declare that my carbon footprint is this or my deforestation status is that.
00:25:00

steve capell: The yellow thing on the right is an independent assessment
that claim issued by typically an auditor or a third party a test lab or
whatever it is. And of course, the important thing there is to be able to
connect am I presenting a verifiable credential that my cat is a certain
breed linking it to a claim about deforestation of a farm. They both might
be individually valid and verified but they have no relationship to each
other. So this is what I'm saying about verification and trust in crossber
trade documents is really about making verifiable connections between
separate credentials that you kind of pour into a graph. This thing on the
left traceability event is the thing that connects inputs in a
manufacturing process to outputs. Right?

steve capell: So if the output was beef patties at a supermarket, the input
might be the cows going into an abbittoire and this thing would say this
batch went through this batch of process and produced these outputs. Those
are the core data structures. that a challenge in this sort of multi-party
architecture is that going back to that for example certificate of origin
example where one party's issuing it and five or six completely different
parties some of whom you don't know have to verify it.

steve capell: If you depend on all of those parties having a certain
technical maturity or you have to go right I better issue this as both a
PDF and as a verifiable credential just so that I accommodate different
parties. It adds a lot of complexity. So we want to make sure in UNTP that
every credential has a rendering template and is both human and machine
readable. also that the mechanism by which you access or discover a
verifiable credential is basically through resolving an identifier. So if
you got an idea of a thing, you should be able to get data about a thing.
and that's also because supply chain processes often have intermediate
actors that don't do much to the sustainability characteristics or anything
else, but they're in between the parties that care. So for example, a
farmer grows a cow.

steve capell: cares about the u animal welfare and they've done some work
on regenerative farming. They want to share all these claims, but the car
goes to a saleard who doesn't really care about that sells it onto a feed
lot is just fattening it up before it gets to the abattoire and the
ultimate buyer who does care. if the architecture depended on each party
receiving a credential and passing it to the next party then as soon as one
doesn't care or doesn't bother the chain's broken right so a key idea here
is that cow could go through multiple hands but it's still got the same
RFID tag in it right so it doesn't matter if the saleard and the feed lot
do nothing the abattoire can still scan the RFID tag and get the farm data

steve capell: This is a scalability concept in UNTP. And then on the left,
this red stuff is basically how you secure it. obviously there's a
verifiable credentials profile. It just basically says use W3Z verifiable
credentials. And please keep it simple and use web. Maybe in not too
distant future we might start recommending did webb and there's a few other
bits in that spec. Please include a rendering template for example. that
doesn't try to reinvent anything you're doing, just gratefully accepting it
and making as simple as possible a profile. This digital identity anchor is
basically how it's a kind of the equivalent I suppose of holder binding in
a wallet, but it's a thing that connects a self-s sovereign identity to
some sort of authoritative registered identity.

steve capell: So, for example, an issuer of a digital product passport
would sign it with their own DID. could be a hosted DID web. It doesn't
really carry any information about really who that did owner is as we know,
right? So, the purpose of the digital identity anchor is for an authority
to register, let's say the Australian business register or somebody like
that to say, I've verified you are the controller of this bid. here's a
credential that asserts that the controller of this did is also this
authorized Australian business ABN such and So that gives you a chain of
trust of identity. there is a separate project in UN that's trying to
globalize this idea of authoritative registers verifying control of a did
and linking it to their authority register entry.
00:30:00

steve capell: And the member states that are engaged in that and likely to
implement are India which you may know as the world's largest identity
register 1.4 four billion Indians all have digital identity and Spain I
expect there'll be more coming but that's quite an important aspect this
thing top here decentralized identity anchor is basically how you manage
the challenge of access to data that is not public but is decentralized
right so I'm not accessing it because I'm authenticating via an API to an
authorized role because very often the party that needs to access

steve capell: the extensive data is totally unknown to the issuer. So that
sounds a bit weird but let me give you an example. the European digital
battery legislation says that a battery passport has information from the
manufacturer but also information about ongoing life cycle and also
eventual recycling. So basically along the life journey of this thing,
you've got data that needs to be added by parties that the manufacturer
don't know didn't know but the manufacturer still controls the gateway to
the collection of information about that because they issued the original
identifier. How do you do that? And similarly the certain information about
chemical composition and stuff dangerous goods and so on that might not be
public but is important for a recycler to know.

steve capell: So, seven years later, this battery ends up at a recycling
plant and the manufacturer now has to provide information to that recycling
plant, but they have a priority no idea who they are and whether they're
authorized or not. So, the idea is that recycling plant would have some
sort of credential from whoever accredits them as a recycling plant, some
government authority in another country that is presented with the request
for data. So the publisher of the data says I don't know who you are but I
can see that you've been accredited by somebody I trust right so it's
complex to give secure access to data to people that you don't know. then
on the right here it's not technical at all. It's business case stuff
because this is a voluntary standard.

steve capell: So trying to make value judgments and value assessments about
why somebody would implement all this. And lastly at the bottom, one of the
more tricky bits, there are, I would say, at least 1,000 different
sustainability schemes. And by that I mean rule books about, for example,
how you calculate carbon intensity or how you ensure there's no slave labor
on your farm or so on and so forth. many of them industry schemes, many of
them geograph geography specific.

steve capell: But if border goods are crossing borders and there's some
claim about this environmental characteristic from I don't know a Brazilian
community of cotton farmers then how does that relate or map to a similar
claim or a requirement or a regulatory instrument in an importing country
right and so this goes to how do I understand the meaning of the
sustainability performance claim that's made in a digital product passport.
I've got to be able to link it to some independent criteria. So this thing
is about publishing schemes and the detailed criteria within them as
digitally as linked data so that a passport can say I'm claiming that my
carbon footprint is XY Z according to the criteria defined and published by
the global battery alliance in section seven of version two of their
document or something right.

steve capell: So this is right at the heart of how you make sense of the
data. and this is all basically a verifiable link data architecture. So
those are the building blocks and if they're used correctly there's a
little bit that's basically the same diagram and just a little bit more
detail about what's in these things. the idea being that each actor in a
value chain without necessarily doing much collaboration with other actors
in a value chain can just issue passports, conformity credentials, whatever
they're issuing in such a way that they're discoverable and traceable value
chains are basically a case of following link data and verifying it as you
go.
00:35:00

steve capell: so that's the intent. there are a lot of attempts around the
world to provide digital solutions for traceability across complex value
chains. And until recently pretty much all of them have the same pattern
which is I've got a platform for that. dear big buyer like Microsoft or
Ford Motor Company or somebody please convince all your suppliers to use my
platform and when they do you'll be able to draw this picture.

steve capell: it doesn't take a rocket science to figure out that that
isn't going to scale. because there's too many trading relationships. And
when you get even one or two steps away from the big buyer, the
relationships are too distant for that buyer to enforce behavior and you
end up with suppliers that are faced with demands to put their data onto
any different platforms. The whole thing falls apart, right? So, UNCP is
very firmly protocol over platform.

steve capell: I don't care what platform you use but you confirm to the
conforms to the protocol and that kind of concept is really resonating with
industry groups that face this problem right and one of the things we do is
start to register so that we get an idea of interest and traction
commitments from software vendors for example to implement there'll be more
coming and commitments from industry groups really to take on UNP and use
it for their purposes. this probably worth mentioning. as you can imagine
the characteristics of a livestock passport will be very different to the
characteristics of a copper concentrate passport or a building construction
steel passport. Right?

steve capell: So there'll be some common core but then there'll be some
differences and to try to have one huge data model that everyone can pick
from and subset is an impossible task. Right? So UNP doesn't even try. It
just says here's a common core of stuff that we think is reasonably common
across all industries and geographies and here's an extensions methodology
to take that common core and build on it what you need and publish it. So
again it's a linked data architecture very much very similar really to the
way a verifiable credential the core data elements in the data model are
obviously based on the context file that comes with VCBM 2.0

steve capell: No. So, UN adds another context file on top of that to say,
okay, here's all the stuff that we consider to be common core. and then the
extensions methodology says more or less, not quite, but add whatever you
want, but don't redefine the terms in UNTP core. and as a consequence the
idea is that even if a farmer issues a livestock passport ostensibly for a
supermarket if that can be discovered by an automotive company that wants
to know the carbon footprint of the seats they should be able to do that
and make sense of it right so given that extensions framework what UNP is
also if you think of it a kind of a toolkit

steve capell: on a plate for an in industry member association to add
additional value for their members. So it's like the uptake of UNP depends
largely on incentivizing industry associations to use it and extend it and
basically convince their membership that this is the solution to their
traceability and transparency problems. And there's a few here. One worth
mentioning because in your neck of the woods is the responsible business
alliance RBA. They've been around about 20 years and their membership if
you look up on the RBA website is basically all the big brands that
everyone knows, Most of the motor companies in the world, Apple, Microsoft,
Intel, Tesla, go on and on.

steve capell: The total annual revenue across the members of the RBA is
about 8 trillion a year and they have chosen UNP as the basis for their
traceability architecture that they're recommending to their members. We're
in fairly regular discussions with those big brands about how to implement.
So that's quite positive for KU NP. And just last week the global battery
alliance also committed to implement use UNP as the basis for their global
battery passport. And then there's a few others in the middle here
construction and Australian agriculture and so on.

steve capell: This is a measure I suppose of interest and recognition that
this shape it may not be perfect right it's not yet finished but this
approach to traceability and transparency scratches a few itches and heals
a few scars I would say that have been opened up over the last few years of
use my blockchain platform or whatever right for this so we're excited that
this is
00:40:00

steve capell: getting quite a bit of attention. this week it goes to the UN
plenary for member states to vote to endorse UNP and recommendation 49 as a
UN recommendation. our intel is that most member states are One or two are
against but I'll just drill down into one or two of the actual artifacts.
Right. So you saw on the architecture diagram the digital product passport.
So here you'll find things like a context file, a schema, a sample
instance. there's a sample I'll just click on that. So this is no surprise
to this community. a verifiable credential of a battery passport. I suppose
the thing I want to point out is that because I accessed it from a website
it triggered the rendering template to show me the HTML version.

steve capell: but the raw data is there. Yeah, I think this one is not an
SD jot. this is an envelope not a data integrity signature, but we support
both. So, if you click download there, you'll get the raw JWT. but that's
an example of a credential. Further down, you'll see somewhere here,
logical data model and various stuff about how you use that logical model.
some sample snippets of credentials. might be worth quickly looking at this.

steve capell: This goes to that point I was making before about it's all
very well to put a bit of data in a passport but what does it really mean
and how do I ensure with some confidence particularly in an algorithmic way
when they've got a high volume of these things that a claim in a passport
that might also have under the same product identifier in using that link
resolver I might sort of give an identity resolver a product ID and it
might say I've got a product passport for you I've got a dangerous goods
declaration certificate I've got a few other things, conformity
credentials, and you grab them all as separate credentials. and now they're
all individually valid perhaps, but you've really got to draw this
connection to say, is the claim in the passport about the same conformity
topic that the independent assessment is saying, If not, all I've got is
two independently valid credentials, but with no relationship to each
other, right?

steve capell: So this con sustainability vocabulary catalog part of UNP is
basically guidance to scheme owners to say if you're running a scheme then
publish your criteria as a linked data vocabulary right so you see some
examples down here the model of any link data vocabulary and an example so
basically a passport then would say here's a conformity criterion and a
subriterion so that ID there would be the criteria I ID URI against which a
claim is made and hopefully if an independent assessment is made about
against the same criteria then you've got confidence that the claim in the
passport is supported by the assessment in conformity credential.

steve capell: So, we use a fair bit of your nice work, both the link data
stuff and the verifiable credential stuff and the decentralized identity
stuff. and it's getting some quite serious attention around the world. And
I think it also importantly acts as a bit of I wouldn't say a counter
because there's different horses for courses but there's a lot of ISOMDL
stuff particularly around governments and it's all about really the person
proofing right all the examples are my driver's license in my wallet and
stuff like that and IMDL is really architected around that wallet and
inerson briefing and that's why we didn't choose

steve capell: use it for UNG not because I got anything against ISOMDL but
just because VCs and DS are a better fit to this shape of problem so
there's a lot more stuff on this I'm not sure it's worth going through
where are we at 646 so maybe open it up for questions and…

steve capell: comments and thoughts feedback
00:45:00

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: I think that's a fair way to do it.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: I'm sure we have a few questions. Would anybody like to
start off? Does anyone have anything they want to ask? Mano, you're up.

Manu Sporny: Thanks Mahmud. Steve, this is really wonderful stuff. really
great work and very much aligned with I think what we've all been trying to
build here for many years it really speaks to kind of decentralized nature
of the problem and what the solution needs to look like. protocols over
platforms. I think all of that is just brilliant stuff. I think the
question I have for you is very kind of specific around…

steve capell: Perfect. Uncle Okay,…

Manu Sporny: what can we do to help. So you are already utilizing a lot of
the stuff that the community has produced which is great and you're using
it in a way that is totally aligned with the way it was designed. What's
missing? What we're getting ready to recharter the verifiable credential
working group in the next couple of months. I know that you said render
method is important to you. what other things should we be putting in scope
to increase the chances of success in what you're building here?

steve capell: that's a good question, isn't it?

steve capell: I think standardizing a render method would be little bit
more consistent guidance on did methods and when to use which webv seems
like quite a promising extension to did web and if I understand right the
sort of formalization of did web will look more like where a simple subset
of did webvh is what did web is today. So I think that's all a really good
direction. and I wonder whether I'm not sure this is really something for
the community group but this idea of verifiable link data graphs as opposed
to a verifiable presentation is quite core to this. Right.

steve capell: And I mean I'm unsure whether that's something that the CCG
should think about and maybe offer some guidance on. but what we found we
need to do is identify some of the most common linked data verification
challenges. For example, did web ABC123 is the issuer of a digital product
passport and the Australian tax office which did webat.gov.au or something
is an issuer of a digital identity anchor that asserts the connection
between the issue of the did controlled by the Australian business and the
formal registration identity of that Australian business.

steve capell: there's a little kind of two credentials independent but with
the subject of one is the issue of the other essentially and a rule about
how do you validate that? This architecture basically in some ways pushes
complexity onto the verifier, Because they have to know how to traverse a
graph and look for those relationships. And whether there's any role for
the credentials community group to think about some sort of best practices
around that sort of challenge, I don't know. but this feels like there's an
opportunity there. yeah.

steve capell: Maybe it was interesting to look at the kind of GDC today
this competition between standards bodies right the IETF SDJ is the way to
go or the S verifiable credentials the way to go or there didn't seem to be
very much in the way of what problem are you trying to solve and what
options are best for that shape right there's not enough guidance

steve capell: on that and one other so a lot of the challenges go to
switching light bulbs in people's heads about the opportunities here right
so one challenge I consistently have is people say verifiable credentials
that's all a bit new fangled and high risk I'll wait a while and I'll stick
to my APIs EDI messaging what I found people haven't really woken up to is
when your data exchange pattern

steve capell: is any one of 10 million businesses having to communicate
something to any other one of 10 million businesses around the world hubs
and API connections just don't scale right you can't have a trading
relationship where you say wait a minute I can't sell you anything until we
get IT departments together to check whether my system's connected to yours
no you just trade right so this idea that avoid digging into the technology
and talking about the business pattern that verifiable credentials solve.
And an analogy I often use is the passport that we all carry around in our
pocket, How does the data get from Australia to the US when I travel? And
it's not because Australia sent it to the US, right?
00:50:00

steve capell: It's because I've got the passport in my pocket and it's
digitally signed by Australia and when I swipe it at a US smart gate,
checks the signature, says, "Yep, it definitely issued by the Australian
government because we know their public key." and look, the photo on it is
the same as the face that's staring at the camera. So, I'll open this mug
gate. That's how it works, And it's a vastly more scalable architecture for
crossber trade digitalization, because you don't worry about EDI hubs and
API connections. You just say do what you're always doing. If you're
creating an invoice, you're making a PDF today, why don't you issue as a
verifiable credential with a rendering template and send it to your
partner. if the trading partner doesn't even know what a verifiable
credential is, never mind. They'll look at the rendering template and
they'll see an invoice. if they do know what it is, they can suck it into
their system and process it. Right?

steve capell: So it just breaks down so many barriers that have prevented
global scalability to many architecture. this concept of the really
fundamental difference between a many to one right a Google maps API right
I don't know how many millions of people use it but it's one API fine but
many to many just does not work like that and verifiable credentials is the
solution to that and abstracting from we're a great technology to this is
the business problem we're solving is some important messaging right and
it's a constant battle

steve capell: to switch that light on and I think the CCG could maybe also
work with some implementers and start to craft this messaging right that is
why should I care so that's another thing if that helps

Manu Sporny: Absolutely all wonderful

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank We don't have a queue. would you like to go next?

Tzviya Siegman: Is that me?

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Yes. Sorry, I mispronounced

Tzviya Siegman: It's thank you. This is really interesting. I just had a
few quick questions that you might, from a sustainability perspective. so
the work that I do is in digital sustainability and…

Tzviya Siegman: I'm just curious about where that fits into this. So is
there something to address things like scope one two three emissions and
even I don't know if some of the enabled emissions…

steve capell: Yes.

Tzviya Siegman: which some people have started to refer to as scope for
emissions. it would be amazing if that kind of stuff is identified here.
great.

steve capell: So for everyone on the call scope one emissions are the
emissions of a factory due to their internal processes. if I'm a blast
furnace and I'm burning coke to make steel, that's Scope two emissions are
associated broadly with the energy I buy, but more specifically with the
electricity I buy. Am I buying clean electricity or not? Scope three
emissions are more or less everything else, right?

steve capell: and most notably in a supply chain context, they're the
emissions bundled into the products that are the input to my manufacturing
process. if you think about what that means and you read the WBSC packed
framework and others, there's some interesting publications on this. The
further down the value chain you are towards consumer goods, let's say
you're a supermarket like Walmart, what percentage of Walmart's emissions
are scope three, do you think the fairly obvious answer is their footprint
is far more impacted by what's on the shelf than by the lights in their
stores, So their footprint will be something like 80% scope 3. Almost all
of it is scope 3.

steve capell: and what industries are doing at the moment and the most
countries have financial disclosures which means Walmart has to say along
with their financial report at the end of the year they have to make a
climate related financial disclosure that says here's my emissions and the
purpose of that is to try to drive both investment banking and consumer
sentiment towards companies that are demonstrating an improving trajectory
Now, how do you demonstrate an improving trajectory if you don't know the
emissions that are bundled in the stuff you buy? Because overwhelmingly
today, almost all corporates who assess their scope three do it on the
basis of industry averages, right? I know I sell this much beef in my
supermarkets and the average carbon intensity of a cow is 15 tons per ton.
Therefore, my total scope 3 footprint is 15 tons per ton multiplied by the
number of tons of beef I sell.
00:55:00

steve capell: the problem with that is next year it's going to be the same
right unless more vegans start appearing and so in order to reduce it I
need to know which cows to buy right I need to incentivize farmers to start
producing lower emissions cows and the same applies to steel and everything
else right so if you don't have level differentiation through digital
product passports you can never have the levers that you need

steve capell: to reduce your overall scope three and only about half the
corporates in the world that I've spoken to even kind of have woken up to
this they see this climate related financial disclosures as a kind of a
compliance obligation at the moment but not as a strategic marketing
direction so in a few more years when company X has more or less had flat
trajectory of over the last three years and company Y is showing
improvements that I'm hoping that there'll be some drivers towards that. So
to answer your qu here, by the way, just on the screen is an example of a
linked data graph, Side wateringly complex, but it's actually much simpler
than reality. This is from mineral mining to finished products like laptops
and cars. but to answer your question more specifically, you would go to
the business case section and look at business case for industry and look
at things like where is this? That picture there, right?

steve capell: which is basically saying if you don't have primary data how
are you going to improve your corporate disclosures over time so there's a
whole bunch of and that's the purpose of UNP right is to provide the data
in a trustworthy way because the other problem currently with
sustainability information is where there is primary data and primary data
means I actually got a fact a claim if you like from my supplier about that
specific product as opposed to secondary data which is industry averages
right? 100 tons of beef. Therefore, the trouble with primary data today is
it's wildly inaccurate. So, even those that ask for it will get, two claims
from two different suppliers of the same thing like PCBs from Taiwan. And,
they're almost the same, but they have wildly different carbon footprints.
Why? Because one included scope 3 and one didn't, and another one had
different rules. And so, it's a real challenge.

steve capell: And that's really the main purpose of this sustainability
vocabulary catalog thing, so that data in passports claims are against
wellestablished criteria that are comparable to other criteria. So yes,
there is the answer to your question. It's not a simple problem though and
it's only partially a technology problem. It's also about scheme and
criteria performance inter comparability. I don't know if that answers it.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you.

steve capell: We're more or…

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Greg,…

steve capell: less at the end of the time.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: I know we're at time. Greg, did you have a quick
question or

Greg Bernstein: I just wanted to reiterate what Mono said in our data
integrity spec and our crypto suites. We've got some capabilities such as
proof sets,…

Greg Bernstein: proof chains, and selective disclosures. Is there anything
else you need? In some of the discussions we've had with trade people, they
wanted some kind of elision or selective disclosure down the chain. If
there's something like that you want,…

steve capell: Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Bernstein: let us Come to our data integrity call or pass the word.
We'd love to know.

steve capell: Yeah. Yeah. So, it's worth a couple of minutes on that. I
know we're at the end of our time but there is a actually different
architectural pattern with what we call selective disclosure in trade
compared to personal credentials. Right? So the obvious use case we all
often refer to with selective disclosure is I just want to prove my age
when I'm buying alcohol and…

Greg Bernstein: Yes. Yes.

steve capell: not show you my whole driver's license.

steve capell: and that's in the context still of the holder making a
presentation of data about themselves. But in a supply chain what you find
is that the issuer of let's say an organic cotton certificate will give
that certificate to their customer because they have a trading relation and
this is the plus one plus two challenge with supply chains. the customer
may well want to prove to their customer that their cotton is organic
without revealing the name of the supplier of the cotton. So in this case
it's not the holder the subject of the initial credential that's doing the
redaction. It's a party some distance down the supply chain. So you need to
be able to kind of make a lossy it's more like I'd rather use selective
redaction than selective disclosure in this case. Right.
01:00:00

Greg Bernstein: Okay. Okay.

steve capell: sort of a language that differentiates the business use case.
It's basically about in logical given I got a PDF that I really want to
pass on but I just want to black out that field and then pass it on. And I
wasn't even the holder of that PDF that credential. Right? So if you think
about it, it is a slightly different pattern. And our inspiration for how
to do that comes from a Singapore trade trust that has a kind of Merkel
tree based selective redaction approach. I think SDJ might also be able to
do it.

steve capell: But I think again it goes back to really being clear about
the business problem that's being solved before we say here's a technology
solution and…

Greg Bernstein: Thanks.

steve capell: you understand the difference in pattern right between that
personal credential selective disclosure versus long supply chain selective
redaction. They're not actually the same business problem.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: And thank you to everybody for being on the call. Thank
you, Steve, for such a wonderful presentation. If anybody has any further
questions for Steve, please feel free,…

steve capell: Thank you.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: and I'm volunteering you here, to reach out to him or
to join the UNP group. They do a lot of great work there. Also, feel free
to reach out to me if you want me to forward anything or anything of the
sort. thank you everybody for your time. have a great rest of your day and
talk to you all soon. Bye.
Meeting ended after 01:02:41 👋

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