Re: [MINUTES] CCG Weekly 2025-05-20

Hello,

Thank you again for the minutes of the weekly meeting! Is it possible to receive a copy of Phil's presentation to share internally?

Best regards,
Stefannie
________________________________
From: meetings@w3c-ccg.org <meetings@w3c-ccg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2025 7:05 AM
To: public-credentials@w3.org <public-credentials@w3.org>
Subject: [MINUTES] CCG Weekly 2025-05-20

CCG Weekly Meeting Summary - 2025/05/20

Topics Covered:

  *   Verifiable Credentials 2.0 Updates: Announcement of VC 2.0 becoming a global standard, along with seven accompanying specifications. Adoption by the UK government and retail sectors was also noted. Future pre-standard work was highlighted.
  *   GS1's Verifiable Credentials Strategy: Phil Archer from GS1 presented GS1's exploration and planned adoption of verifiable credentials. This includes several use cases focusing on improving supply chain efficiency, such as onboarding new sellers to online marketplaces and streamlining customs processes. The presentation detailed GS1's "crawl, walk, run" approach, starting with a limited-scope implementation by September 2025, using DID Web, JOSE signing, and aiming for interoperability with existing systems like the UN Transparency Protocol. The emphasis was on practical implementation and gathering evidence of value before larger-scale investment.
  *   Community Collaboration and Fragmentation: Discussion centered on the fragmentation within the digital credential ecosystem and how the community can foster greater convergence and interoperability. Points raised included the need for simpler demos to demonstrate the value of VCs, the importance of render methods, and the consideration of various DID methods (with DID Web and DID Webv highlighted as potential choices for ease of implementation).

Key Points:

  *   Verifiable Credentials 2.0 is now a global standard, signifying significant progress in the field.
  *   GS1 is strategically adopting VCs to enhance supply chain efficiency, beginning with a focused pilot project.
  *   The community acknowledged the challenges of ecosystem fragmentation and discussed potential approaches towards increased interoperability, emphasizing the importance of practical implementation and user-friendly demonstrations.
  *   GS1's approach prioritizes simplicity and ease of implementation for its initial VC adoption, opting for DID Web and JOSE signing. However, they remain open to future evolution and adapting to the evolving landscape.

Text: https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-ccg-ccg-weekly-2025-05-20.md


Video: https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-ccg-ccg-weekly-2025-05-20.mp4


CCG Weekly - 2025/05/20 11:57 EDT - Transcript
Attendees

Alex Higuera, Benjamin Young, Dmitri Zagidulin, Erica Connell, Harrison Tang, Hiroyuki Sano, Hugo Sheng, James Chartrand, JeffO / HumanOS, Jennie Meier, Joe Andrieu, Kaliya Identity Woman, Kayode Ezike, Mahmoud Alkhraishi, Manu Sporny, Markus Sabadello, Phil Archer, Phillip Long, Rob Padula, Tim Bloomfield, Vanessa Xu, Will Abramson

Transcript

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Harrison. Hey,…

Harrison Tang: Hi. Hey, how's it going?

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: can you hear me quick?

Harrison Tang: Yes, perfect.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Excellent. Hi Phil,…

Harrison Tang: I think everyone is joining late today. Hey, thank you for jumping on

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: thank you for joining.

Phil Archer: Hi. You're welcome. Is there a RC channel that should be in or something? Okay.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: No, it's just chat and no call. Nothing else.

Phil Archer: Thank I thought I better join on time in case I had to do something. My office recently wiped my laptop and started again. There's so many things that I need are just not available.

Phil Archer:

Harrison Tang: Yeah,…

Harrison Tang: we're probably starting about two three minutes. I think recently people have been joining a little bit late. So not the case I think two years ago everyone is pretty much on time…

Phil Archer: Everyone does. I know I do.

Harrison Tang: but nowadays I don't know what happens. Yeah.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: We're just going to give it a minute until we get critical and mass and then we'll get started.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: We'll give it one more minute and we'll

00:05:00

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: All right, let's get started. welcome to the CCG call for today, Tuesday the 20th of May. As a reminder, we have a code of ethics and professional conduct. Please make sure that you have reviewed it and that you are abiding by any introductions or reintroductions that anybody would like to bring up? Anyone new to the team want to say All right. Any announcements that anybody would like to make? I know there's a few pieces of big news that happened last week. I don't know if anybody wants to talk about that.

Manu Sporny: …

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Mano place.

Manu Sporny: so for those of you that didn't see on the mailing list, verifiable credentials 2.0 O is now a global standard along with seven specifications in the family which include VC hosy cozy all the data integrity stuff ECDSA EDSA bitstring status list and I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple but they're all global standards now which is awesome. thank you Mahmud. that is the press release that was released by the worldwide web consortium. there are a number of testimonials in there that you should probably really great stuff if folks didn't also see the UK government has adopted verifiable credentials 2.0.

Manu Sporny: So, it just became a standard, but they just announced that they will be supporting verifiable credentials 20 in their government-based wallet. there were also press release testimonial announcements made by the retail sector. so this is the national association of convenience stores their conexus standard setting body the international forcord standards foundation these are all retail standards noting that they will be adopting verifiable credentials 20 as well including a number of specifications that we are incubating here including verifiable credentials

Manu Sporny: API the render method stuff a variety of things of that nature. verifiable credential barcode. so that's all really fantastic news and a huge huge thank you to this community and all of the conferences rebooting IW that participated in the creation of these standards over many years. So, congrats to all, their global standards and now we have a whole bunch of other, pre-standards in the pipeline that we're trying to move forward as well. that's it.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you, And if you would like to be involved in the pre-standards that Mano just mentioned, please feel free to join us tomorrow and every Wednesday at the CCG incubation and promotion. I don't know specifically if we're hosting it tomorrow, Mana,…

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: do you know if that schedule is set yet?

Manu Sporny: Yes. Yep.

Manu Sporny: We are going to meet tomorrow.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: And the schedule is set for every Wednesday at 11 now, right? Since the visa working group is Okay.

Manu Sporny: That's Yep. Dup.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: So please feel free to join us there, and have your say and incredibly happy and proud of all the work that everybody here has done. Thank you for that. Does anybody have any other announcements they would like to make? All right, hearing none. Phil, you have the floor.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Phil shared a wonderful article a couple of months ago about VCs at GS1 and…

00:10:00

Phil Archer: Of course,…

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Phil probably needs no introduction but for those who do not know would you mind introducing yourself and what you do and all the wonderful things. Yeah, you see your

Phil Archer: of course. Yeah. So, hopefully things are happening. and everything works. So, hi. yeah, you see that? Okay, What's this thing in front of me now? Hopefully that still works out if it doesn't. so, yes, I'll introduce myself. some people may know my name, a lot of you will not and know nothing about me at all. which is fine and that's normal. my wife barely knows who I am. I've been married to her for 30 years. and even a fewer number of people in the world have ever heard of GS1. So I'll introduce a little bit about that as so first of all, Mud Harrison, thank you very much indeed for inviting me today and thank you to all of you for being here. I hope what I have to say will be of interest.

Phil Archer: Normally when I talk about VCs, it's often the case that around the room I probably know more about VCs and dids than other people there. That clearly is not the case here. I'm actually slightly nervous today because all of you without exception are the experts on this and I'm very much an amateur. GS1. I can tell you about what we're doing, but I do not pretend to have a fraction of the knowledge that a lot of you have about this technology and I'm very grateful for the time to be able to speak to you today. Thank you. the first thing to say is that I need to learn how to use a computer which would make my life so much easier.

Phil Archer: is building on what we were just talking about with the announcements that all the recent recommendations and I know that the did resolution spec is coming on very nicely and all the work that this community has done for many years. a sincere and heartfelt thank the work that this community is doing is enormously important. as you know, it is being picked up by governments and trading partners and other people all around the world and I dearly wish that I had time to be an active member. I'm very conscious that I have contributed exactly nothing recently. so I genuinely grateful so is the rest of the organization that I'm representing today. So a bit about me. I was on the W3C team for eight years starting in February 09.

Phil Archer: This is the first time I got to go to an event where we all had our picture taken. if you've been to a W3C event, it's actually quite remarkable how many of those people are still there. Some are not. but I can see one person who's actually died since this picture was taken. But, 15 years ago, a lot of the same people were still there. but, in July 2017, I moved to join this organization called GS1 that most people have never heard of. although everyone is familiar with the barcode and we are the organization behind the global barcode. if you add up all the staff that work at different bits of GS1, there's quite a lot of us. but we're a federation. We're not one organization. I work for global office. There are individual bits of GS1 all around the world.

Phil Archer: including obvious places like GS1 US and GS1 Germany and less obvious places like GS1 North Korea is a real thing. GS1 Iran and I think Rwanda's joining us soon. I'm not quite sure. We're everywhere. so we're quite a well-known standards body in our community which is the retail and supply chains. We got a long history. we date there are various dates we can give any oldish organization you could pick various dates but here's one for you 3rd of April 1973 that was the date on which a committee that had been formed a couple of years previously by the American Grocery Association mixture of retailers and manufacturers got together and chose a winner having advertised a competition for choosing

Phil Archer: what would be the barcode that they knew they wanted to use. And you can see the one there that everyone's very familiar with. It was designed by a team at IBM led by George Lauer. And for context, 52 years ago, it was Killing Me Softly was number one by Roberto Flack. That's how old this thing is. And that is the best copy we have of that page that had those different types of barcode on. It won because it was simple. It was much easier to print than the circular ones. And of course it's been used ever since. Now very conscious in this community that organizations like GS1 are exactly the kind of people you want to get rid of. We are exactly the kind of federated identity providers that s are designed to make obsolete. I understand that. We're not the only ones. Digital object identifiers, internet domain names, you name it.

00:15:00

Phil Archer: There are all sorts of numbers that are and different kinds of identifiers that are issued and we are one of them. This is some of our high-profile members. I mean overall we've got about 2 million of them but these are the ones that most of these will be household names and you'll see the kind of people I mean if you think about W3C who do whatever Google and Apple and Microsoft tell them we do whatever these people tell us to. so the Proctors and Gambles, the Nestles, the Walmarts, the Tesco's, the Metros, so these are the big names behind GS1 and their predecessors and current versions have been with us all the way.

Phil Archer: which leads me to the point about today, which is this barcode has been around for 52 years and is used throughout those supply chains throughout the retail sector. And most people don't even think about it. It just goes beep and that's it. You've forgotten about it. And the people who trust it are the people who help create it. The people who are our members, the brands, the hospitals who do a lot of work in healthcare, the retailers, the people who are involved directly in the creation and maintenance of GS1 standards like any standards body are the people who trust it most. But not everyone trusts us. Some people are requiring more evidence. Prove it. Okay, you say that's your global trade item number.

Phil Archer: what and who are they? those are all the people that you're more familiar with, The regulators, the certificate issuers, online marketplaces, not just Amazon. There are loads of them, thousands of them actually around the world customs and border officials, people who are not part of the GS1 community and yet are seeking some sort of verification that the identifier on this product on this pallet on this shipment whatever it may be is actually something that they can get behind and trust and that's a bit of a challenge for us.

Phil Archer: I mean after decades of comfortably being part of the supply chain world in especially grocery and healthcare and apparel those are the ones where we are strongest increasingly now in DIY or hard goods as you might call them that's our community but what about these other people they want more evidence trust but verify so for some years we've been looking at this and different myself and other colleagues have been involved one way or other I think that picture is from 2018 an early IIW. that's my colleague from GS1 US, Paul Dietrich. If you've been to IW many times, you've probably met Paul and a few others from GS1 US. four years ago now, Paul and I and other people worked on this video that we did with the company formerly known as Transmute.

Phil Archer: this was a theoretical proof of concept we were working on where GS1 would issue a verifiable credential to prove that the product identifier was genuine from our point of view and that we knew the customer. and it turns out that was actually a use case that now happens in the real world. But we did all this work four years ago. I was happy to work with Joe on the use cases and requirements for decentralized identifiers. who knows it might even get back to doing that again for the new one. and then more recently, with Marcus Sabadillo, I chared the RDF data seconicalization working group, which was useful obviously for data integrity, for those proofs. So, I've been around for a while. but I admit that more recently I've done absolutely nothing at all to contribute to this community. And again, I'm grateful for the work that you all do.

Phil Archer: And throughout this time, we've been talking about it and talking about it and talking about it. This is Karen, one of my colleagues from GS1 Belgium, Luxembourg, and two of the old guys of GS1 out of focus there. We've been talking for ages about what should we do? Should we do nothing? Should we do this? Should we do that? I don't know. So we hired a couple of consultants as you do and said to Kevin who used to work for GS1 therefore knows us very well and a woman who some of you may have the pleasure of knowing yourself Blesvki she's been around open standards government data public sector stuff more recently was working in the national health service in the UK they did some work for us that took six months or more and they're the ones who had

00:20:00

Phil Archer: to explore the technology that you've developed and put it in the context of GS1 and make recommendations for what we should do with it. And that work is what has focused our minds and is what we are now enacting because their recommendations were accepted. So there's a bunch of use cases, some of which you will be very familiar with because they're ones that you talk about quite a lot. This is actually one of our biggest drivers. I mentioned that four years ago we worked with Transmute on a theoretical idea where a new seller wanted to sell their product through a marketplace. and the verifiable credential would come from GS1 that says, "Yep, this really is our global trade item numbers. this is" GS1 Netherlands has done that exactly that with the biggest marketplace in the Netherlands. It's not Amazon.

Phil Archer: It's bold.com<http://bold.com> which is part of the same group as Albert Hind and Delars. and the process on boarding a new race a new seller on B.com is a sevenstage process. But if you turn up with your GS1 verifable credential, it only takes four steps because it bypasses that. And they're now GS1 Netherlands is working with the Chamber of Commerce. and so that if you turn up and you want to sell on B.com and you got a verifiable credential from the Chamber of Commerce and from GS1 Netherlands, it's only a three-step process. It's increasing efficiency in that kind of world. So the GS1 Netherlands and Bold.com use case is really important.

Phil Archer: It's a real one. Real VCs being issued, being verified by bold.com<http://bold.com> and used to improve the efficiency of selling stuff online. Another one people here are very very familiar with, but I mention it because it's relevance to GS1 is the true age work that Manu and his company and David Isel and others have done at NACS. This doesn't evolve GS1 at all, but it's relevant to us because this selective disclosure way of proving that you're of age to buy products, that's that kind of retail environment. That's us. So although it doesn't use GS1 standards, doesn't need to, it's not what we do, it's relevant to us that the technology is there and the integration of the technology in things like point of sales systems is important and noteworthy that it's happening and we think that might be useful to us in future as well. Again, people on this call are more familiar with this than I am.

Phil Archer: I'm well aware of that. But colleagues at GS1 US work with Vinnie and the others and on the US Customs of Border Protection on the pilots that went on last year. A lot of you here may well have been involved in that. But that's another sign to us that this is an important technology that this can actually improve efficiency, can reduce the time that a container sits on the dock side before it's moved off to its destination. This saves millions of dollars if you can improve the efficiency and that's what We're about helping businesses shift stuff around the world and sell more stuff. So it is very much relevant to the work that JS1 the Barco people are involved with. And then there's the work that Syong talks about from Singapore the digitalization of trade documentation. Again huge potential for saving very substantial sums of money.

Phil Archer: This is Kevin and I down the road from me here at the port of Felix, Britain's biggest container port. I'm on a trip there together. but the processing of those documents and there's work going on with the international chamber of a unit based in Singapore called the digitalization standards initiative that my boss chairs trying to improve the speed and efficiency with which trade documentation is moved as the physical goods move as well in New Zealand.

Phil Archer: again this is about business numbers the relevant government agency there and so work going on there that's directly relevant to our colleagues on New Zealand very similar to what manu was just talking about there in the UK so government use of the technology matters in a world where we are talking about regulated goods and digital product passports and certifications and everything else that's what matters to us. this is some work that I have been slightly more active in of recent months or actually about a year now. the UN transparency protocol UNP this is all about tackling greenwashing. It's about documentation and claims about products at scale. And you have a barcode, you scan that, you get to a set of links.

00:25:00

Phil Archer: Some of those links will be leading off to verify the credentials that form the digital product passport or the country of origin certificate or whatever it may be. So very exciting work going on there heading towards completion of that I hope this calendar year getting a lot of traction there as well. So a lot of stuff that we've done at GS1 is conformant with is consistent with the work at UNP. Didn't VCs come into that as well. I mean VCs are exactly what it's about. And so that work that those consultants did led to a bunch of recommendations to our senior managers at the end of last year.

Phil Archer: And I don't know whether you do this in your organization but it's very common for us to think in terms of a crawl walk run approach to start off small do a little bit and then decide whether you want to carry on to walk and then maybe more work in future and the recommendation we made this is where you're going to start shouting at me was to do crawl and stop the evidence for why GS1 should invest substantially money, substantial effort into VCs, ain't there? There's strong evidence that we should do something. There's very strong evidence that we should be prepared. There's strong evidence that we should take this seriously, that the pilot work we've done, that the examinations we've done are very real and pointing in one very positive direction.

Phil Archer: But the evidence that says okay you got to invest serious money in this ain't there. Therefore the proposal was to do actually a very limited amount of work with a very specific aim and a short timeline and then we can build on that. So I'll talk a bit about some of the things that we thought about because there is this balance between yes we should do it and hang on be careful maybe not. This will be familiar to absolutely everybody. How much more can you take on? We're kind of busy right now. something that's to conversation, at least not directly relevant. all those billion barcodes we have around the world. We're in the middle of changing them to 2D barcodes to embedding our identifiers into a URI. which you will see increasingly on R codes on products and some other 2D codes as well.

Phil Archer: when you're in the middle of changing something that's 50 years old, that's a lot of work, We don't have a lot of spare capacity. At the same time, we're doing that. We have this idea for how we want GS1 to evolve in the next 5 years. The details of that don't matter today. What matters is we have quite a big program of change and evolution within the organization that's going to take us for the next 5 years. Plus, we have a bunch of other stuff going on and we're dealing with all these new regulations.

Phil Archer: and we just got to do the regular licensing of numbers stuff. So, any organization, we have a limited capacity and any work on DIDs and VCs has to compete with those if it's going to get any Very conscious of who I'm talking to, but when you look at it from the outside, the technologies, yeah, making big progress. Of course they are. The version two recommendations last week, of course, Of course, there's huge work that's been going on for years.

Phil Archer: years has gone into this. Of course, everyone recognizes that. But the fact is that today there are lots of different standards. Eidis in the EU, I think, is using SD JOTS whereas UN UNP and US Customs and Border is using V W3C VCs signed by Jose. Those differences matter. One part of GS1 in Canada, they're doing a lot of work with Hyperledger, which doesn't always fit together.

Phil Archer: And then there's the work at IETF on Kerry and AC/DC and the work at DIFF about different DIB methods. Lots of different stuff going on. It's fantastic. Everyone putting huge amounts of effort and skill and expertise. It's brilliant, but it ain't mature yet. And so if you're looking at investing in stuff and you're a global organization with 119 different bits all called GS1 and you're going to choose one and not the other, that's dangerous because you might then have to find yourself engineering that's a risk for us. So, it's helpful when we have a look at the UN transparency protocol and see this which is the current list of things that they do. and we have a look at that and we compare that with what the US Customs and Border Protection people say. And actually, it's more or less the same, not quite. That's got to be a good start, right? So, that's kind of where we think we're going to be heading because other people are doing the same thing and we want to support that and we think it's important that we carry on.

00:30:00

Phil Archer: And so part of that work that Kevin and Era, the two consultants did was this document that I pointed you to when I wrote to the list back in February. And I am very very very aware that it's not complete. There are lots of things people sent some really helpful feedback for which I'm very grateful indeed. Thank you. I'm very conscious that this is not a complete survey of the entire landscape because that would take forever. it was just what Balashesky found and what she put together to help us understand the technical landscape. Of course, there's more to it than that. I understand that. This is a quote we got from Vinnie, which you can't do it all right. You're not going to have everybody in the entire chain all using the same thing. if I can get a few signals that helps me shift a container off the key side a bit quicker, that's going to be good.

Phil Archer: And if it comes from third parties, that means so much more than the person who actually wants you to trust them offering it in the Sinong, as many from Singapore, and I said to him during TAC last year, "So you think we should be issuing VCs?" He nearly jumped at me. Yes, we've been asking you to issue VCs for years at GS1. Get on with it. What are you waiting for? And so yes, we should engage. GS1 should prepare.

Phil Archer: Yes, we should work on this and do it seriously and mean And if we issue a VC, we should stand by it. Not as a pilot, not as another thing that we've done Real signed by a real private key somewhere buried away. That's what we have the evidence to do. We have the evidence and the support and the direct yes from our management to proceed with crawl. But we haven't asked for anymore because we don't have the evidence yet. Hopefully we will get that. So what that means is that by September this year, which is a very short timeline, the bits of GS1 that want to, which is only going to be a handful, the ones that want to will be able to issue and verify credentials that support those GS1 identifiers. They'll have a common data model, a common format, and a common render method.

Phil Archer: some of the specifics. this will please some of you and upset or disappoint others. I'm sorry. This is what we've seen so that niches from Netherlands where they're issuing VCs that are used by bold.com<http://bold.com> on board new sellers. They're using the Spirion library for doing that. That's been updated to work with VCDM2. We're going to wrap that up in a Docker container and make it available to our network so those that want to can use it. So we're using that software as the basis. We're using version two of course of BD CM BCDN bit string status list. we're definitely going to be signing with Jose. We want to also support integrity proofs as well. We'll include a random method.

Phil Archer: In terms of DIDs, we think dead we think did webv is almost certainly where we're going to end up. we kind of want that to succeed. for various reasons because it's easy and who features really good. so we expect to move to that, but we're going to did web for now because it's just easy. And again, although they're not pilots, which is a very limited scope. we have a data model which is the same as every other issued identifier in the world. There's a central office which is where I work and we issue little tiny bits of number space to our members and they then issue longer number strings of numbers to their members. That's how that works. We're going to be consistent with the work that's gone on US customs and border and UN transparency protocol.

Phil Archer: And you can see some of the bits of GS1 where we are confident that it's expect these things to be available. In order to introduce this and make this part of what GS1 does all day every day is an enormous amount of work that will take years not just because you got to educate People have got to understand why it's important. They've got to just do it and feel confident about it. Heavens above moving from one-dimensional barcodes to two-dimensional barcodes. I spend most of my time explaining what a URI is to a lot of people. it's endless. So, the amount of work to make this part of what GS1 does is huge. But, we've made a start and that's what we hope to do. After September, we're going to be gathering evidence. Is it useful? Does it actually add value to the system? We believe it will, but I need proof. Is it practical? Should Let's hope. Maybe it's not. Get that experience.

Phil Archer: and then in less than a year's time we can then decide whether to pitch to the management to make it more of a thing. And it's possible that I want to say on this occasion that later on this year we might be and I hope we are open to taking part in more work with other people and maybe this is a place to find some of those partners. I've talked a lot. The slides are available and there are links as well on there but I will stop talking now and see if anything there prompts any questions. Thank you very much indeed. I'm trying to stop.

00:35:00

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you so much, opening the floor for questions. Man, I see you have your hand up. Would you like to go ahead?

Manu Sporny: Yes, absolutely.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: And I put a link in chat to the presentation.

Phil Archer: Thank you.

Manu Sporny: Wonderful. thank you, That was wonderful as always and you are all always so kind to the community. we also you a huge debt of gratitude the work that you did at W3C to get link data further along the chairing of various groups that were fundamental to the standards we have today you did all of that and we really appreciate that.

Manu Sporny: So I think that the most critical question is I totally hear you on the crawl and that there's this kind of digital credential fragmenting going on in the space and we would all like to have just one thing that we could just focus on implementing…

Phil Archer: Yep.

Manu Sporny: but as you know there's disagreements on what the best path forward is right what can this group specifically help with in that capacity? Right now we have a list of specifications that are standards that we're incubating. So for example you mentioned render method. I'm sure you're going to go out with something there but that is one of the things we're trying to really hone in on and settle.

Manu Sporny: There's work on verifiable credential barcode. So the ability to take a verifiable credential and put it into a QR code which is a 2D barcode.

Manu Sporny: There's work on that that we could do. and clearly all that stuff is I mean it's a bit cart before the horse. You've got to make the decision to adopt verifiable credentials at scale before any of those other things matter. But as you also know it takes years for us to get those things through the standardization process. So what can this community work on concretely to help help you and…

Phil Archer: Yep. I don't think there's a single thing I can point to and…

Manu Sporny: and GS1 decide to go on to the walk stage?

Phil Archer: say if you did that everything would be great. I think all of you I mean collectively are doing is what's necessary and of course everybody learns as they go.

Phil Archer: There are things now that are seen as normal that would have been seen as way off the scale a while ago and other things have been dropped and other thing and just one does evolve. I imagine most of you work for commercial companies. You do what your customers tell Everyone does. You have to. In our case we have 118 customers that is 118 bits of GS1 around the world who are members of our community. the render method thing is important because it's the thing that worries me most in that if you do a demo for somebody and the person you're talking to is non-technical and has no idea what a digital signature is or what a verification step is, all he or she is going to see is, " that looks good." And they couldn't care less how it works.

Phil Archer: And so the render method sort of it almost covers up the fact that there's that verification going on. And yet that's the important bit without it and so something I struggle with and I have struggled we since started down this line ages ago. How do you show somebody a simple demo of a VC and DID interacting to do all the proofs and the control and everything else that you want to do in a way that shows that non-technical person why it's better than sticking a green check mark on a website. Why that green check mark is not what you're showing them. Because It looks the same and it feels the same to them.

Phil Archer: in my work I'm very careful I don't want a demo app because all people are going to see is that's an app I've got 1700 apps on my phone already I don't need another one so I think manu that the answer to your question is there is no single answer it's carrying on what we're doing evolving accepting change accepting cherished ideas may need to be jettisoned accept new ideas that's why I think web could be a really good one but I don't know because the industry will decide, help us show that it's not just a green check mark on a web page, cuz anyone can do that.

00:40:00

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you, Phil. Mano, did you have a followup or are you good?

Manu Sporny: No. Good for now.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you. I did have a question for you,…

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Phil. you shared a report earlier in the year and I know some of the findings were in the presentation that you just linked and you got quite a bit of feedback on that report. Are you expecting to be making any updates to it or…

Phil Archer: Mhm. Yeah.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: or is it locked in so to speak?

Phil Archer: I don't know whether we'll come back to that specific report…

Phil Archer: but what we will be doing and must do is to publish stuff as soon as we can that we have that we think is ready. I'm afraid we simply don't work in the lovely open way that W3C does. that's not to say I'm hiding one of the links that's in the PDF of the slides just now is to the data model that's being done in GitHub. Anyone can see that and comment on that. so yes, the feedback is helpful and we will be publishing more and we're very happy to be challenged on any of the decisions that we have made.

Phil Archer: As I say, we're being very tentative about it. And I could imagine, to answer your direct question, I can imagine that we would publish something that says this is why we made the technical choices we made and this is what we think is clear and this is where we're kind of hedging our bits and we're not quite sure. So I don't think that particular assessment would be updated. But I do think it would be perfectly I think we must publish something before long that talks about our choices of technology and why we chose this particular flavor rather than another and be ready as I say to change again because things are coming in all the time suggesting that we should do things differently.

Phil Archer: we're acutely aware that because of the position we hold the decisions we make need to be done with care because other people will look at us in the way that we look at them everyone looks at each other right everybody wants to be second everybody wants to be yes I'm going to jump on that bandwagon and so we're kind of interested and we're conscious of how careful we need to be so if we do make those technical choices is which of course we have to do. We will justify them. I think that's probably the best I can promise you right now.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you talked a little bit about the fragmentation in the ecosystem, You've been in the standard space for quite a while.

Phil Archer: Yeah. I wish I'm an old man now.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Do you have any thoughts on how we as a community can help tackle that fragmentation? Any ways we can fix the problem, so to

Phil Archer: When I was younger and started down this line, I kind of thought, you publish a standard and everyone's going to do it and then you realize that that's just not how it works, The people who work on the standard will implement it and they'll use it and they really couldn't care less what you've done in your standard because they're going to do theirs. I guess the obvious answer is interrupt an interrupt between I guess the universal did resolver helps a lot because what's sent back the did do itself is common to whatever the method may be. the greater the convergence the better. it would remove one of the big hesitations that we've had and I'm sure other people have as well.

Phil Archer: but I'm conscious that convergence is happening. this community is converging on fewer variances than there used to be. That's good for all of us. It's difficult. It's hard to let go of something that you put your life into, that you put your heart and soul into. I think increasingly what I try and do in our work is to accept openly and happily that other people are going to do things their own way and look for ways to make connections. So, can I take u an SD jot and press a button and out comes the equivalent integrity proofs version of the same thing? That's not easy. I'm aware that they don't actually interoperate that way.

00:45:00

Phil Archer: But a thing that did that universal translation system, that would be great. But I don't know if it's possible.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you so much. did anybody else have any other questions for Pel knowing that we don't really have a queue right now?

Phil Archer: I'll tell you one little anecdote. when I was on the W3C team, there was a bloke in Virginia jumping up and down saying, "We got to do this thing called verifiable claims." And it passed from one member of the W3C to another. I think I was the fourth one. I was certainly the third member of the team at the time to handle the request from Manu and the people who were closest to him at the time. And I remember that conversation saying to Manu, as I said to many people before and since, it's what every standards body will say to you, I know you want this. Who else wants it? It's you and who else? Right?

Phil Archer: That's always the question with the standard when you go to an STO and say we'd like to turn this into a standard. You and who else? And I was delighted. I mean, I wanted to be convinced and Manu, of course, did convince me. So, one of my proudest things is to say, I'm the guy that pushed W3C to say yes to this community. And I'm so glad that happened because boy, have you done some fantastic work and it's really important.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you so much.

Phil Archer: You got your hand up.

Manu Sporny: And absolutely for that we are forever thankful to you. I don't think a lot of people knew that Phil which so I'm really glad that you brought that up.

Manu Sporny: Yes Phil was absolutely the staff contact at W3C that made verifiable credentials live at the organization. I did have a question around the WebVH stuff that you mentioned.

Phil Archer: Yeah. Yeah.

Manu Sporny: So there are 200 plus DID methods that some people think that's wonderful others think it's the worst thing ever. but it looks like you've really kind of focused in on a did method two but related did web and did webvh and I think you'll be happy to know that webvh is one of the did methods that we are proposing to standardize. It's got quite a bit of support so it feels like a very solid choice.

Phil Archer: I hurt. Yeah. Yeah.

Manu Sporny: what about and…

Phil Archer: Yep.

Manu Sporny: and I think we've seen other people in the ecosystem picking did web as the starting mechanism. the downside there of course is that it's not necessarily a fully decentralized method but it kind of bridges the gap. It's sort of decentralized enough. It depends on DNS which some people don't like but the modifications with did webv make it much more decentralized and trustworthy where you do not have to just anchor to the DNS you can anchor to other things like you said there's this nice who is thing so what set of features in did webvh were specifically of interest to GS1 why did webh instead of just did web did, JWK why didn't you pick a Bitcoin or Ethereum based method?

Manu Sporny: What was the…

Phil Archer: It comes down to simplicity and…

Manu Sporny: if you could kind of go through some of the thinking in that decision that would be helpful.

Phil Archer: ease of implementation. I can think of all the people across GS1 globally that I know, I can think of one who thinks blockchain isn't a waste of time and and it's not so it's very unlikely we would choose a blockchainbased method. of course, all things, we can be convinced, we can be told we're wrong, we can be told we're stupid. We're again very open to that. So we're sort of instinctively not going to do that. The simplicity of the web and then good, it's got features now. That means that all those weaknesses which have been addressed.

Phil Archer: At least they appear to be addressed to the point where it's probably good enough. it's clearly better than just did web. but by the way, it's backwards compatible or you can do them both. That's helpful. It's just the simplicity thing really comes down to that. Now, are there other simple methods that we could use? We're open to it. Say that the door is absolutely not shut. It's not a definite decision. we're too early in the stage in the development for this. Maybe it' be years before we did that and the whole point is you can do different ones. So maybe we could change in the future as well. But I think the short answer to your question manu is simplicity and ease of implementation.

00:50:00

Phil Archer: And I apologize for all the people I just offended by being rude about blockchain. Sorry.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you.

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you so much, Phil. does anyone have any other questions for Phil?

Mahmoud Alkhraishi: Thank you so much for your presentation. Have a wonderful rest of your day, everybody, and talk to you soon. Bye.

Phil Archer: Thank you.

Phil Archer: Thanks again. Bye everyone.

Meeting ended after 00:51:31 👋

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