Re: Experimental did:cel Witness Service (open-source)

On Thu, Mar 5, 2026, at 10:58 AM, Manu Sporny wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 5, 2026 at 10:37 AM Christoph <christoph@christophdorn.com> wrote:
> > If any of this sounds interesting I would be happy to share more of my vision and where I am at.
> 
> Yes, it all sounds interesting, Christoph, please share. It's the best
> way to get feedback on your ideas.
> 
> Also, +1 for building reusable components... that's exactly the reason
> why we didn't try to do a "Web Identity" working group at W3C and
> instead focused on composable, globally extensible, primitives
> (Decentralized Identifiers, Verifiable Credentials, Data Integrity,
> Verifiable Credential API for Lifecycle Management, Encrypted Data
> Vaults, authorization capabilities (ZCAPs), etc.).

That was a great decision. I am a big believer in how venues structure outcomes.

Maybe that is the missing link now. A Web Identity based Data Space that links all the components together. One that arises from principles and the needs of the components vs top down like others are doing.


> The reason we haven't achieved your "complete coherent model" goal is
> that we're still trying to figure out how all of these things fit
> together, though I think you will find that we're further along than
> you might realize.

I just want to clarify my perspective regarding progress of the specs & technologies. I am not denying that great progress has been made. I am very excited about what has been achieved that I have observed since the beginning of this list.

I do not come from an enterprise perspective and instead come from an individual developer perspective.

I speak for the individual developer who likes to build and does not have deep cryptographic expertise. The kind of developer who would never show up on this list yet would love to leverage the technologies developed by this group.

I want to leverage cryptographic spaces as a well-understood and compatible primitive in the applications I write. I do not want to have to go down rabbit holes to integrate something I feel should be easy to consume.

I aim to help close this gap as I believe this is necessary for wide adoption. Adoption by millions of individuals, not companies.

So if I sound like there are gaps, they are motivated from this perspective and I look forward to seeing what exists that can be concretely implemented against a larger pattern.


> 
> So, let's see where your vision overlaps with what we've built so
> far... please do share.

I have not shared before as I needed to prove my ideas to myself and what I am working on is somewhat tangential to this list.

I am working on an approach to build complex systems rapidly and in the process I have decomposed everything down to a few primitives.

I am at a point now where the unbounded foundation is running.

What I would like to do in collaboration with this group is integrate JS reference implementations of different parts of the VC/DID stack to create one cohesive pattern that spans all parts of the ecosystem and can address everyone's needs.

I believe having a complete implemented pattern in a repository that we all work against could begin a path towards providing the backbone for ecosystem components to validate compatibility automatically. IMO we need to focus on supporting the development of a principled ecosystem, not just components that are compatible.

I have the vision and energy to drive this. I have no idea about the exact path yet but I believe it is the only path that will lead to rapid adoption. Like you said, pretty much everything is built. So what is the next step now?

I will prepare something and share soon.

Christoph



> 
> -- manu
> 
> -- 
> Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> https://www.digitalbazaar.com/
>