[MINUTES] VCWG Entity Recognition 2026-04-14

This meeting of the VCWG Entity Recognition group focused on renaming the
specification, addressing several pull requests related to document
updates, and discussing the purpose and implementation of use cases. The
group voted on a new name for the specification, reviewed pull requests for
minor text revisions and the removal of version numbers, and had a detailed
discussion about a use case document focusing on business-to-business
identity verification and trust architectures.

   - *Renaming Specification Poll:* The poll for renaming the specification
   indicated "Recognized Entity" as the leading choice, though a decision was
   deferred to allow more participants to vote, with the poll to be reopened
   and resent with a clearer end date.
   - *Pull Request: Remove Version Numbers:* A pull request to remove
   version numbers from names in the specification was discussed and approved,
   with the data being retained in a noted, non-disruptive manner.
   - *Pull Request: Renaming Specification Update:* This pull request,
   related to the renaming effort, was discussed and will be held until the
   renaming poll concludes, with a minor point about the transition from CCG
   to WG noted.
   - *Pull Request: Revise Specification Text:* Two pull requests from
   three weeks prior were reviewed, with one marked as likely ready for merge
   after a final review of comments by Ted Thibodeau Jr. and the other to be
   checked by Manu before merging.
   - *Pull Request: Digest SLI Consideration:* A comment from Shigeya S
   regarding the inclusion of digest SLI consideration in the spec was
   supported, as it aligns with the BCDM spec and is a security consideration.
   - *Issue: Document Use Case Purpose:* Steve Capell presented an issue on
   documenting use cases, leading to a broad discussion on various
   business-to-business and peer-to-peer trust scenarios, emphasizing the
   importance of digitizing existing trust architectures and the need for the
   spec to accommodate both centralized and decentralized models. The
   discussion affirmed the value of Steve's use case and highlighted the need
   to consider discovery mechanisms and the distinction between roles and
   individuals in credentials.

*Action Items:*

   - Benjamin Young will resend the renaming poll with an explicit end date
   and encourage further voting.
   - Ted Thibodeau Jr. will review comments on Pull Request #6c26 and
   resolve any outstanding items before it is merged.
   - Benjamin Young will check with Manu about taking over Pull Requests
   #6b30 and #c26e.
   - Steve Capell will raise a Pull Request for the use case document,
   potentially incorporating feedback from the discussion.
   - Phillip Long will attempt to file an issue regarding the distinction
   between role provision and individual identity in credentials.

HTML:
https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-vcwg-entity-recognition-2026-04-14.html

Video:
https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-vcwg-entity-recognition-2026-04-14.mp4

[image: W3C] <https://www.w3.org/>
VCWG Entity Recognition 14 April 2026 Attendees

Present

Benjamin Young, Elaine Wooton, Kayode Ezike, Kevin Dean, Phillip Long,
Shigeya S, Stephen Curran, steve capell, Ted Thibodeau Jr

Regrets

-

Chair

-

Scribe

transcriber
Contents

   1. Renaming Specification Poll <#6e12>
   2. Pull Request: Remove Version Numbers <#6b30>
   3. Pull Request: Renaming Specification Update <#a6c9>
   4. Pull Request: Revise Specification Text <#c26e>
   5. Pull Request: Digest SLI Consideration <#9d25>
   6. Issue: Document Use Case Purpose <#a44d>

Meeting minutes

Benjamin Young: Hi We'll give it a few minutes for everybody to wander in.

Benjamin Young: I'm going to give it till 5 after and then we'll get
started.

Benjamin Young: Okay, it's 5 after. So, let's get started. thanks for
coming everybody. This is the call currently known as the VC entity and
recognitions one of the things we'll be discussing today is naming. but
we'll get there gradually. does anyone have any announcements or
introductions of yourself or anything else you want to say before we dive
in? Any agenda additions, key things you want to look at? there has been a
flurry of confusion around mostly other people's meetings.
Renaming Specification Poll

Benjamin Young: Not this one, think. but who knows? I just wanted to
confirm again that this time was good for all of you on the call at least.
I think we shifted to this call time just before everything shifted to the
BCWG. So maybe we were ahead of the class. But in any case, I just wanted
to do another check-in to make sure we can keep this call time or if
anybody needs any tweaks while that's a trending topic. Okay, to the topic
everybody signed on to discuss. we are renaming the specification.

Benjamin Young: Manu sent a poll out sometime last week and we got a
handful of votes based on goodness almost 20 choices checking through a
various set of recount options for this rank choice voting the winner looks
to be recognized entity by a tiny margin over verifiable recognition.
anyone have complaints about recognized entities very agreeable today
everyone. Thanks or your mics are all broken.

Benjamin Young: Awesome. Then I will record that on our renaming issue,
which I'm certainly at. Go ahead. Whoever that was. Shigeya S:

Benjamin Young: I just heard that. All good. anyone have thoughts? I think
this is probably last call on this topic. All right.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I failed at the poll. I would definitely prefer the
second name that you said,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: not recognized entities, but the other one Can you share
the link to it?

Benjamin Young: So yeah,…

Benjamin Young: something we could decide to do in part because it's a
fairly lightly intended attended call is to give the poll just a little bit
more time. I am not able to see who responded. is it done? Yeah, I can.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: My mail client is misbehaving in bad ways.

Benjamin Young: Let me confirm this is the right link.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: That's why I didn't see it.

Benjamin Young: That is not the right link. trying to find it myself.

Benjamin Young: Ted problem is I'm now logged into the system for the
voting, so I can't see any of the links. I am getting it out of my inbox.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: That's special.

steve capell: Hello all.

steve capell: My apologies for joining late. I was on another meeting.

Benjamin Young: There it is. Yeah, no worries.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Thank you.

Benjamin Young: And Coyote's got us covered the links in the chat.

Benjamin Young: So Steve, just to catch you up, the current discussion is
around keeping the name renaming poll open a bit longer. we could even
just, say we're going to keep it open for the next 20 minutes if you all
want. the original plan was to conclude this part of our story together
today,…

Benjamin Young: but we can leave this poll open for a bit if y'all want to
put a few more votes in andor we can take a vote on leaving it open for
another week to see if more things come in. Anyone have thoughts one way or
another?

Kayode Ezike> Renaming vc-recognition Specification | OpaVote
<https://opavote.com/en/vote/6241510774538240>

steve capell: I've already voted,…

steve capell: but I'd be happy to give time for whoever wants to vote. s*.
Oops.

Benjamin Young: Thank you,…

Benjamin Young: Dad, did you get your vote in?

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I'm in the process.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Thank you.

Benjamin Young: It's only 20 choices to pick from and…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yeah, it's I suppose I could just go with one.

Benjamin Young: you can rank them all if you want. Yeah, that's also a
thing.

steve capell: I was interested to you you can learn what's in the minds of
a participant by how they want to name something. And so it's interesting
that some of us me come from this we need to recognize authoritative
registers like the Australian business register and stuff like this.
Whereas others are coming from we might have a peer group of people that
trust each other and want to say something like I trust Ted because Manu
trust Ted and I trust Manu right and the word peer I think it was Ted that
was proposing that implies that sort of different purpose and it's not to
say that those two different purposes can't be met with the same spec but

steve capell: It highlights a use case, I suppose, in my mind that isn't
mine, but equally important.

Benjamin Young: And pure pier something was on here. I'm looking through
the list. BC peers and BC pure I think were the only two that made it in.
Kevin, I don't know that we're gonna add any more names to the list.

Benjamin Young: That's an interesting one.

Kevin Dean: No, no,…

Kevin Dean: I wasn't suggesting that that added. that was just in the
context of what they were saying earlier about, I trust this person…

Kevin Dean> Transitive trust.

Benjamin Young: All right.

Kevin Dean: because Manny trusts that person. that's the concept of
transitive trust.

Benjamin Young: Right. Yeah,…

Kevin Dean: No, I'm not suggesting adding any name to the list.

Benjamin Young: I know. We could always have more than 20 choices. That
very true.

Benjamin Young: So Ted,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: And now it's a tie.

Benjamin Young: with your vote in, let me make sure this is getting counted
properly. I'm not sure It might be. there we go. So, it defaults to an
instant runoff, which is not really what we want because it doesn't
properly.

Benjamin Young: I need to make Yeah, it's showing the newest number here in
terms of counts.

Benjamin Young: So recognized entity still wins that unless that's
ultimately what you pick.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: …

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I'll cry on my coffee.

Benjamin Young: All Hold your nose and not lie down the road as Devon likes
to say. And I All right. So, Any desire to leave this open even longer or
to just hang out with Ted and,…

steve capell: It's good.

Benjamin Young: grind your coffee?

Ted Thibodeau Jr: when did it actually get sent out in the first place?

Benjamin Young: That's a good question. See if I can find the URL in my
inbox.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: And did it indicated that a end date?

Benjamin Young: No, I think there was probably an assumed by the next
meeting, but I don't know that it was stated. Manu sent the mail out, So,
I'm trying to find it. You think Gmail would support searching by URLs, but
it doesn't. Okay. the email.

Benjamin Young: It only went out a day ago and…

Benjamin Young: it didn't go out to the whole mailing list. It went out to
basically the regular attendees. Yeah. Yeah.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: There you go.

Kayode Ezike> It was sent out yesterday

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I will ask that it be resent with an actual explicit end
date.

Benjamin Young: Yeah. Me too. Yeah. That's not good on a number of levels.
Okay. I will redo that. Yeah. I don't think that's nearly enough time.
Okay, I will write that email just following this meeting. thank you
everybody. Sorry about that. I thought it had gone out last week because I
wasn't watching for it. okay, great. So, moving on.

Benjamin Young: We're going to turn to issues and PRs always. so let's see…

Benjamin Young: do you all prefer screen sharing or links? you let me know
if my screen sharing is sensibly sized or not. I can zoom in and…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I like the power of hand.

Benjamin Young: resize windows and whatever. That seem okay.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Roughly.

Benjamin Young: Do you want it squarer or more horizontal?

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I bet if you hit the command plus once,…

Benjamin Young: Okay. How's that?

Ted Thibodeau Jr: that's way better.
Pull Request: Remove Version Numbers

Benjamin Young: So, many of these PRs are clerical and probably can just be
merged. This one I was removing version numbers from people's names. It's a
data nightmare.

Benjamin Young: I don't think it needs voting. Steve, did you have
something?

steve capell: No, no.

steve capell: I was just going off mute because I'm on a phone and it's
hard to control that and…

Benjamin Young: Sure.

steve capell: at the same time as see the screen.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, not a problem.

Benjamin Young: So then go ahead.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I didn't look closely at the removing numbers from names.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: It makes sense for data. You're absolutely right. But it
depends whether these people are labeled as former whatevers or active
whatevers.

steve capell: That means whe

Benjamin Young: So, there's a note thing that's now visible in the spec.
and it puts a parenthetical after each person with the note.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Perfect. Okay,…

Benjamin Young: So, the data is still there. It's just now in a sensible
place.

steve capell: See what he's doing. Interesting.

Benjamin Young: And…

Phillip Long> looks good

Ted Thibodeau Jr: that answers my question.

Benjamin Young: doesn't Yeah.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: That's great. Thank you.

Benjamin Young: Doesn't bugger up my robots anymore for one thing. Cool.
okay.
Pull Request: Renaming Specification Update

Benjamin Young: So, I'll merge that one later. this one. Yeah. So, I think
Avon's wanting a few more revisions just to make it clear where the
activity is moving to, including the mailing list. But this original PR was
actually about renaming. But I think we'll hold off…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: It may be worth a comment back to Ivon that he means
moving from CCG

Benjamin Young: until the vote completes and then maybe I shouldn't because
there's some link I'll do another pass on this.

Benjamin Young: Y'all can plus one it and I think we can merge it while the
thing's being renamed and…

steve capell: I'm going to follow

Benjamin Young: do another one unless folks have objections to that.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: G to WG, not W3C.

Benjamin Young: Yeah. it's the inner temple of the W.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yeah, it's just the part where that look like the CCG is
not part of W3C and that's

Benjamin Young: Yeah, Yeah, there's ongoing tension there about use of the
word W3C on CCG specs and all kinds of stuff, but yeah, point point taken.
yeah, I'm not going to bother commenting live right here, but if you want
to say something to Avon about it, that's fine.

Benjamin Young: So, we have two other PRs from three weeks ago. Looks like
this one has processed most of your feedback, dead. Some of it's outdated,
too. A lot of it's outdated and it has approvals that came in around the
same time. yeah.
Pull Request: Revise Specification Text

Ted Thibodeau Jr: That's probably fine. There's some weird GitHubisms that
don't properly handle people putting in this correction,…

Benjamin Young: Yeah. Right.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: but it doesn't show up as having been applied. steve
capell:

Ted Thibodeau Jr: It just shows the old not that outdated and that's injury
review probably.

Benjamin Young: Okay.

Benjamin Young: Are you okay if this gets merged Okay. And we can right
here.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: You've got a resolve conversation there. I haven't found
Where is this? Yeah, you've got a resolve button. I don't think that I do.

Benjamin Young: That's interesting…

Benjamin Young: because I would think as the author you could resolve your
own comment.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yeah, you would think that.

Benjamin Young: If you want I can do them for you now. or we can just leave
them here for posterity in case somebody realizes they didn't get added
later.

Benjamin Young: But probably makes sense to merge this and…

Benjamin Young: do any further editing separately.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I found it. And that's leave it until a little while
after this meeting and I'll review those and we'll

Benjamin Young: Okay, that's fine.

Benjamin Young: and just ping us when you're happy. We have another one 61.
I haven't been dropping links in here. I'm sorry y'all or even saying the
names numbers. it's not great for the minutes. This one likewise has one
approval and…

Benjamin Young: yeah, we had gone through each one of these in discussion.
And it looks like there's a just tiny handful of tweaks here.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yeah, these don't say Good. Yeah,…

Benjamin Young: No, because I'm not sure why the other ones did either. I
think what probably happened with those is Monu accepted some of your
changes but not all of them.

Benjamin Young: And so then that somehow messed up like the dates earlier.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: that's a challenge if some things are accepted and others
aren't. Unless it says I'm not accepting this,…

Benjamin Young: Right. right sure Shadea there's a comment from you from
recently on this PR

Ted Thibodeau Jr: then I don't know to argue it.
Pull Request: Digest SLI Consideration

Shigeya S: Yeah. yeah. later the issue that mentioned that the digest SLI u
type of the protection is not introduced in this spec but it's mentioned in
the BGDM spec already. So I think it's natural to include digest here if
there's something you want to remove digest.

Shigeya S: So It's of course security consideration but the text goes that
mentioning about the digest mice. So I just mentioned

Benjamin Young: Yeah, that's fair.

Benjamin Young: No, they're both presented as equal in the BCDM. so they
should both probably be listed and we do have an issue for that. I'm
personally in support of that. Anyone have thoughts or concerns with that
comment?

Benjamin Young: And it very well will probably come in as a separate PR if
somebody wants to take that on after this one goes in I would guess.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yeah, I think that makes sense.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: And the issue will track it.

Benjamin Young: And thank you for the issue as well. That is very helpful.

Benjamin Young: So again, with this one, I think it's probably up to Manu
to accept these. I may check with him if he's okay with me taking over his
PR because he's the author of both of these. he might appreciate the help,
but I'll check before we merge these two. Okay, we'll go through issues. we
just discussed number 68. let's see. It's a bunch ready for PR. there's our
change document title one. I'm going to all the way down here.

Benjamin Young: Add the vote. That look okay to everybody?

Benjamin Young: I'm just saying to the folks on GitHub, here's the vote
using rank choice.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yeah, that makes sense.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Put a note in that you get one shot at it.

Benjamin Young: Yeah. Yeah.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: If you submit your ballot with only two names on it, you
can't go back and add more.

Benjamin Young: for Yes, that's interesting. I thought it would let you do
it. Go back and tweak your vote. But wow,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Unlike most W3C things, it does not have

Benjamin Young: this one's totally separate. It'd be great if the W3C had a
rank choice voting system. put it under here.

Benjamin Young: I look okay.

Benjamin Young: Ted, please know you only get one chance.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I think most important.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yep.

Benjamin Young: Okay, So, that's done for anybody who is only watching
GitHub. There's a few people that might be Okay, let me take out the PR
ones, which this one I'm going to go ahead and mark ready for R as well.
It's pretty straightforward.
Issue: Document Use Case Purpose

Benjamin Young: Steve, you posted issue 66 and are here. I thought can't
see the …

steve capell: Yeah,…

Benjamin Young: you are. Hi.

steve capell: this is just documenting a purpose, I don't even know whether
it goes in the spec or whether we have a part of the spec here's some use
cases. in which case not exactly these words would go in The intent of this
issue is just to share with this group. what are use cases? so what's the
do we create separate use case documents or…

steve capell: do we use cases in specs?

Benjamin Young: Yeah. …

Benjamin Young: we do indeed in this case have a separate use case
document. This guy here,…

steve capell: Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Benjamin Young: use cases. I'll drop the link in the chat. And I think we
obviously are managing the issues for it in the same place, but your issue
can likely go straight into that document as a VR and then we usually have
a use cases. Okay, I'm gonna add a use case label.

Benjamin Young: And then try to a PR would be ideal on the use

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yeah. If nothing else,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: if nothing else, that use case document gets used as a
sort of checklist. Have we implemented all the features that are necessary
to satisfy all the use cases?

Benjamin Young> vc-recognition/use-cases.html at main · w3c/vc-recognition
· GitHub <https://github.com/w3c/vc-recognition/blob/main/use-cases.html>

steve capell: Yeah. Yeah,…

steve capell: of course. Entirely reasonable. So, do you want me to raise a
PR or what's next? Because I don't know if I changed the wording a bit. All
right. Okay. I can do that.

Benjamin Young: case document. Yeah, good look.

steve capell: Did you say you put a link in the chat? I'm just going to
find that.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, it's just in this repo and it's called use cases.

steve capell: In the same rep. I'll find it then.

Benjamin Young: Yep.

steve capell: No worries. I might change the wording a bit when I wrote it
as a explainer to this group as opposed to a, …

Benjamin Young: Has it right? steve capell:

steve capell: a publisher. So, I might tweak the words and make a PR.

Benjamin Young: Yeah,…

steve capell: Okay. I don't mind.

Benjamin Young: that sounds great. Do you want any feedback on this before?
would you like to recap that on today's call or prefer that people read
this and send you feedback?

steve capell: What would the group prefer?

Benjamin Young: I think it'd be great to get, a five minute overview or…

steve capell: All right.

Benjamin Young: however long you need.

steve capell: The primary use case we have is linking credentials to some
sort of authoritative basis. And there are a few slightly different
variants. For example, a crossber invoice as a verifiable credential issued
by an exporter seller would be signed by their did but the verifier in the
other country doesn't know who that did is really and so you add a lot of
value if the exporter can choose it is their choice, right?

steve capell: But if the exporter can say, and by the way, here's my formal
business registration where the registar has confirmed that I am the
controller of this did and asserts that the controller of this is also
known as this for example Australian business number. What that means is
then the verifier can confirm not only that the invoice hasn't been
tampered with but it was issu issued by string and business such and such.
This is helps with things like customs clearance trade finance access. I
think it's about $2.5 trillion worldwide of available trade finance that is
not granted. In other words, the bank has the borrower wants it, but the
bank says no.

steve capell: And half the time it's because of identity and document
integrity concerns and the difficulty of checking them. So what reason I'm
here in this group I suppose is that when almost all the talk about
verifiable credentials is about verifying a credential. but how do you get
into ubiquitous technology stacks the consistent way to verify linked
credentials really the graph behind multiple credentials and that's the
reason we're here right and I know this is all these use cases are mostly
in the business and business to government and trade and commerce space not
the private individual ual identity space.

steve capell: and so sometimes what you want to protect for very good
reasons in the personal space exactly what you want to publish and prove in
the business space right and so yeah I think this idea of verifying a small
graph of linked data that's cryptographically connected between multiple
credentials is really fundamental to the future of automated due diligence
in supply chains for example. so this is just talking through a kind of an
expectation about how that might work.

steve capell: So there's a presumption here for example that if an
authority is going to say here's your business registration credential
where the subject did that authority didn't issue because it's a self-
sovereign did created by the member of the register then the authority
needs to confirm that the requesting party is the genuine controller of
that deed and so I suppose that raises these questions about what are the
boundaries of this spec? Are we just saying here's what a entity
recognition credential looks like?

steve capell: But are we also saying what are your obligations as an issuer
of an entity recognition credential when it comes to for example confirming
that the subject genuinely controls so I'm trying to raise those sort of
questions in this group about sort of outside the pure credential data
model what are the rules about issuing them and what are the rules about
verifying link credial so that we get this consistent approach because
otherwise there's a risk that some implement just might not verify control
of it in which case the whole architecture breaks down right so yeah I
remember exactly…

Benjamin Young: All right, then.

steve capell: what I wrote now it was a week ago during the last …

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Sounds good. I skimmed it when it went in and it looked
reasonable. I think the focus of this particular work item, I think, is
similar to the old signing parties for PGP keys.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: It's the mutual web of I know you,…

steve capell: I don't have this very Yeah,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I know them, or I've just met them, but I recognize that
them, and that means that I give them some more credence than if I had just
encountered them. how much more credence depends, of course, on who you are
and what tests you've put them through. it's going to be a gradual thing.
This is a developing environment which I don't think anybody has a real
handle on yet.

steve capell: that I think you're obviously dead right that…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Good step forward.

steve capell: who issues the entity recognition credential and what
governance processes around it. Is it just Manu knows Fred or is it an
authoritative register that has and every authorative register exists under
some different national regulation and has different degrees of identity
controls and so So it is up the way at least in some of the UN projects
we're dealing with dealing with that is different of registers.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yep.

steve capell: So for example if you're a legal authority in the US it would
be a state level business register. in Australia it's a national one but
doesn't matter. it's a government-run register that's been around for 200
years and is now just looking to do what it's always done on paper but
digitally and verifiably. If they come under that nation state legal
governance framework then they would appear on the UN grid register which
is a register of legal authorities right but there's other kinds of
registers where it's also useful to know for example the party that signed
this invoice is genuinely a member of the Monuka Honey Association and so
the product is likely genuine Monuka honey.

steve capell: This has got nothing to do with state level regulations,
right? So now you need a different register to say,…

steve capell: Monica Honey is a verified industry association. That's all
you can say, so yeah,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: What? Yeah.

steve capell: I think what we'll end up doing is really distinguishing
between these different lists, right? and the conditions to join that list
and that's how you get some sense of to what extent do I trust this yes and…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yeah. it's the matrix of shoot. I just had the word. It's
not reliability, but it's reputation.

steve capell: sometimes that reputation is earned through years of ethical
participation right this is the more like peer trust framework.

steve capell: I got five stars on Amazon because I've been there for 10
years and everyone loves me. and sometimes it Yes.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: That's the one too that you have to watch out for the
inflation,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: and somebody who has a high rating just because they've
been there for 10 years, not because of anything they've actually done with
an equal challenge going forward is that national registers are not
necessarily automatically trustworthy.

steve capell: That's right. That's right. Yes. Yeah,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I don't want to impugn any given country at this time,
but I would imagine that somewhere in Southeast Asia or somewhere in Africa
or in the island nations might set up a registry for the spammers of the
world.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: And that would quickly get bad reputation, but that might
not matter if they've got enough robots set up to upvote each other. Yep.

steve capell: if it's a recognition mechanism, So I think some will be peer
recognition and some will be hierarchical, So if a register like that was
created and it was on the UN grid, then there would be governance processes
about stripping it. But similar for conformity assessment, Product quality
there. How do you distinguish between a certifier who is just any random
party and one that is accredited? there's another link in the chain. You go
to a national accredititation authority and then you go up to IAC global
mutual recognition.

steve capell: In other words, our use cases are really all about one
pattern,…

steve capell: which is not trying to reinvent trust architectures, merely
trying to digitize existing trust architectures, right? And so,…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yep.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: And…

steve capell: yeah. Yeah.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: one of the challenges of this, right, is to avoid
accidentally setting up a recentralization of the stuff that we've done a
lot of work on decentralizing. Okay.

steve capell: And that hence my initial comment about this being B2B and a
lot of the ethics around this I entirely subscribe to, Personal identity,
decentralization, control of your data, these are all sound principles. but
at the same time these existing architectures of trust that actually matter
even to people exist right and…

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Yeah. Yep.

steve capell: don't want to force centralization that doesn't previously
exist only to empower existing quite important trust architectures. I mean,
if you're presented with a driver's license, you do want to be sure it was
issued by an actual driver's license authority, and there are hundreds of
them all over the world. so how can you be sure, So, that's still
protected. The personal identity protection is I should be able to abstract
or redact whatever I want when I show you my driver's license, but you as
the verifier want to be sure it's a real driver's license. Right?

steve capell: So there is a good blend somewhere of a decentralized
personal identity protection and basically leveraging existing trust
architectures in the paper world that have existed for 200 years for good
reason.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Mhm. Yep.

steve capell: And it's surprising how often I've found myself in
presentations and discussions when people are talking about let's say a
trust register and they mean something like some new infrastructure that is
a list of trusted I don't know wallet issuers and okay where did that come
from and who's governing that and how do you know who it's trusted you get
into all kinds of complex questions when you reinvent not reinvent but
invent some sort of new governance model

steve capell: because behind all of these registers there has to be some
sort of process and governance right and I think we just want to reflect
existing ones not new ones and there's actually a lot of benefits that
acrew from that because people create registers all the time there's one
called I don't…

Kevin Dean: Yes.

steve capell: if you're familiar with it the legal entity identifier and
it's run by an organization called glyife the global legal entity
identifier federation I think it's a not Swiss not for profofit and
supposedly they're the global authority for business identity.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: Hey, Yep.

steve capell: My argument is really since when does an Australian business
answer to a Swiss not for profofit? this is an attempt to centralize
something around a technology that in my view makes almost no sense.
because the actual authority of course is the government under which you
registered your business, not a Swiss not for-p profofit, And so I'm trying
to distinguish very clearly between these kind of fanciful attempts at
centralization and just Yeah.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: And it's self-declared authority registar is not
necessarily inherently bad or wrong, but it's more questionable than a
long-term governmentally provided thing or…

steve capell: Yes.

Shigeya S> This spec will be an important piece to implement balanced trust
architecture among centralize/decentralized, imo.

Benjamin Young: You go ahead, Kevin.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: I don't know about provided but recognized and accepted
and which government and where these things are all come into play. Kevin,
you're

Kevin Dean: And this is one of the things that I've been advocating with
verifiable credentials for quite a while. for those of you who are not
aware I originally started in supply chain. I got into verifiable
credentials when I was with GS1 which is the supply chain standards
organization responsible for the retail barcode. and I'm fully with Steve
on this this is the beauty of this work that we're doing here it means that
we can adapt credentials the organizations that are doing any kind of
certification or any kind

Kevin Dean: of role recognition can add verifiable credentials to their
processes and…

steve capell: Okay.

Kevin Dean: there isn't anything that we need to do or should do that say
that that dictates how those certifications take place. It's simply an
organization stands up and says I am doing X to recognize businesses other
entities or individuals and anybody who wishes to consume that credential
is doing so because they are looking for that kind of certification and the
verifiable credential is the means by which is being done.

Kevin Dean: while there are some issues with GLE and the legal entity
identifier I don't think there's anything in what we're doing here that
would prohibit them adapting this to to your LEI in a VC although they do
have their own VC model already and it's no no and…

steve capell: Yeah, I don't mean to be too negative about life.

steve capell: Sorry, I came across that way.

Kevin Dean: it's but it's Yeah,…

steve capell: But yeah, it's just these claims sometimes.

Kevin Dean: but this…

steve capell: Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Kevin Dean: but there's a lot of things in supply chain that can benefit
from this.

Kevin Dean: As you said earlier, the payment issue is a tricky one to solve.

Kevin Dean: And with the right framework for a VC, we can solve that. we
can or at least make it easier.

Benjamin Young> 👍

Benjamin Young: Yeah, thank you Steve for taking us through that.

Benjamin Young: K to go ahead.

Kayode Ezike: Yeah, I have two questions comments. so the first thing is
I'm looking at the steps you outlined here. There's a place where you said
using something like did webv to discover the issuer of the DIA. I question
are we correct in assuming that I guess the business item for example who's
given this credential to assert that they're part of this network is do
they always have to know that they're on a list can an organization decide
to recognize an entity without them necessarily asserting that themselves
and als

Kayode Ezike: Also the other thing around that is is that the way to go if
basically kind of my understanding put you can control that as the
controller of that data right so it's not I guess up to you in as much as
it is up to the issue of the DIA and…

Kayode Ezike: so I'm a little concerned about

steve capell: All right.

steve capell: So I think I understand your question. yes, the member of any
register will always know that they are a member of that register because
there's a governance process to achieve membership, at least in our use
cases.

steve capell: And part of your question I think goes to the discovery
mechanism of how do I go from I've and this credential was issued by
regular with the word trust right but trusted issuer there are two pathways
right what one is you go and search the register and say is party

steve capell: on it. The other one is the party presents a credential
signed by the register that says they're on it. and part of this there are
two different and both may be valid but in our use case almost exclusively
it will be from the transaction like an invoice to a credential issued by
an authority register. In other words, you're discovering through the ID
not through the register. and that's partly because of the scale of things,
I mean, a small medium-sized economy like Australia has 2 million
registered businesses and about somewhere between two and 500 changes to
the register every day.

steve capell: So if you imagined a register level credential listing all
members, it would just fall apart. It'd be impractical, Plus, some
registers carry information that the registered member may want to
communicate to parties they know, but it's not public information. so you
always want to basically traverse a trust graph from transaction to
registration to directory and up that way. which is why I bring in didv who
be not because I'm saying did VH is the only way to do this.

steve capell: I'm just saying a key part of our expectation is that the way
you discover the entity recognition credential is through a service
endpoint or through the did document of the registered or the recognized
entity right and that's also not part of this spec as far as I can see but
for us it's a really important part of I can't draw a trust graph if I
can't find the credential that I need for my trust graph and if there's 20
different ways to find it, it won't scale very well. Right? So yeah, the
simple solution here for verifiers is to be able to basically follow a set
of verifiable and cryptographically link data until you hit something you
trust.

Benjamin Young> acknowledged source?

steve capell: No, you might stop at just the invoice because you actually
know the did of the invoice issuer. Is your business partner you've been
trading with for 10 years and by some out of bounds method he says this You
don't need to go any further. I just trust it. You might not know it and
you go up to the next level that says here's a Australian business register
issued entity recognition credential that says this party is that
Australian business. good. You might have maintained a register of a
directory if you like of all business registers around the world and the
Australian one is atto.gov.au/

steve capell: EU/ something okay or you might not have maintained a list of
the roughly thousand registers around the world authoritative ones that
register businesses and in which case you go one step further and you get
to the UN that says this is a national recognized business register so you
stop wherever you want…

steve capell: until you hit something you trust is the operating theory but
you've got to be able to discover it through the identifiers not by
searching ing a register you may not even know exists.

Benjamin Young: This has been great.

Benjamin Young: Steve, I think you've got support for your use cases. I
don't think anyone's raised any concerns. anyone have thoughts out of this
in terms of any actions we need to take relative to the specification as
written

Phillip Long: I think this works perfectly for the businessto business kind
of context. it doesn't of course if the member is actually an individual
and…

steve capell: memory actually.

Phillip Long: not another organization. In that context,…

Phillip Long: you would do something more along the lines of a
recommendation kind of credential. and the business contest has worked well.

steve capell: Yes. I acknowledge that I've just got one use case,…

Benjamin Young: And…

steve capell: and that kind of ear trust or peer recognition is an equally
valid use case.

Benjamin Young: I think the question, probably for us as a group is can we
incorporate ate both those use cases mentioned into our currently being
renamed specification.

steve capell: And particularly I think what do the use cases mean for the
boundaries of the spec so this business of discovery of the credential
through did that probably applies equally to the peer one right because how
do I find when I'm talking to Ted that he's trusted by Manu if not through
Ted's did maybe there's another way I don't know but the spec as far as I
could see at the moment doesn't only talks about the data model of the
entity recognition credential

steve capell: not a consistent way to discover the entity recognition
credential which in our case is equally important.

Phillip Long: The context that I'm thinking about in the background is the
recent approach that the state of Utah has taken with the state endorsed
identity

Phillip Long: which makes a distinction between the provision of the role
versus the individual.

Phillip Long: So that if you can revoke the status of the role but you
don't want to revoke anything associated with the did of the person and as
long as we preserve that distinction I think we're

steve capell: Yeah. So me yeah there is a layer that we haven't spoken
about in this whole business registration stuff…

steve capell: which person represents the business today and that gets
tricky right because you've got two identities the identity of the director
who for a transient period as long as he is a director of that business or
she I'm sorry has an authoritative role the business identity itself
doesn't change directors come and go so that sort of relationship is
typically managed by the business registers and each one does it
differently and at least for our purposes we add a lot of complexity if we
try to trace

steve capell: the business identity to the legally authorized person
identity that's acting for that business.

steve capell: And I'm trying to avoid that at the moment, but yeah.

Phillip Long: Ex I think that's exactly right.

Phillip Long: Because in a sense that you want the role to re revocable not
anything to do with the individual behind that role in other contexts.
Right? So,…

steve capell: It's almost I want to know that the business exists how long
it's existed and that it hasn't been dregistered really right…

Phillip Long: Mhm. Exactly.

steve capell: which is there's no personal parties party in that at all
right unless my use case is about sometimes you do have a use case that
requires a person right are you an accredited vet we're doing this phyto
sananitary inspection of agricultural produce being exported.

steve capell: It is going to end up with a personal identity. but we'll
have to be Yes.

Phillip Long: Yeah, that's…

Phillip Long: where I think the notion of an endorsement of the
individual's provision as opposed to the individual's identity is the key.

Benjamin Young: Awesome. Thank you everybody.

steve capell: Yes. Absolutely. Okay, thank you for the PR.

Benjamin Young: I am gonna cut us off because we're at time. this was a
great discussion and it should certainly continue. Steve, I think you've
gotten plenty of blessing on this use case. That'd be great to see that
written up. and Phil or anyone else with keen interest in this, it would
probably be good to see where it fits and if we could even add an example
or two to the appendix related to this to both confirm that we have all the
pieces and to highlight this use case because it's existing.

Benjamin Young: it has an implementation of sorts and we want to make sure
that this new spec matches what's been done so far.

steve capell: Thank you.

Benjamin Young: Let's talk again maybe next week.

Phillip Long: Understood. How about that?

Benjamin Young: Yeah, how about that? All right, we'll see you all in about
seven days. Thanks everybody.

Ted Thibodeau Jr: a planned.

Kayode Ezike> Will be an interesting test for wallets, which will need to
support checking registries and tracing back from the VC backwards, but
worth exploring

Ted Thibodeau Jr: It is

Benjamin Young: Bye. Okay,…

Kayode Ezike: Cheers.

Phillip Long: Ben, I will be in the SETI meeting next week. in Utah on the
state.

Benjamin Young: thank you. all good.

Phillip Long: But I want to try to figure out how we can make sure that we
continue to keep that separation between a provision of a role and the
individual.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, I think that's important. do you want to file an
issue on that? Okay.

Phillip Long: And I'll try to file an issue on it if I can figure out how
to say it plainly enough.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, say it poorly. That's fine.

Benjamin Young: It'll just make sure it gets discussed.

Phillip Long: Okay, sounds good.

Phillip Long: Thank you. Bye.

Benjamin Young: Thank you, Phil. Take care. Bye. Meeting ended after
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