[MINUTES] VCWG Entity Recognition 2026-04-28

This VCWG Entity Recognition meeting focused on significant steps towards
the formalization of the specification. The group successfully concluded
the spec renaming poll, officially adopting "Recognized Entities" as the
title and initiating the process for a First Public Working Draft (FPWD).
Discussions also delved into technical considerations like digest SRI
versus digest multibase, alignment with UNTP Digital Identity Anchor work,
and the creation of examples for concurrent property usage. The meeting
highlighted a strong desire for interoperability and clear signaling to the
broader community.

*Topics Covered:*

   - *Spec Renaming Poll Results:* The poll overwhelmingly favored
   "Recognized Entities" as the new specification title. This decision was
   formally approved and a pull request was merged to update the
   specification's metadata and short name.
   - *Publish Recognized Entities Specification:* The group voted to
   publish the specification as a First Public Working Draft (FPWD). While the
   repository name was updated, it was noted that further adjustments might be
   needed for broader W3C tooling.
   - *Digest SRI vs Digest Multibase:* A discussion ensued regarding the
   inclusion of digestSRI alongside digestMultibase in the specification.
   While some noted the existence of digestSRI in foundational specs and
   the potential for confusion, the group ultimately decided to await guidance
   from the broader VCWG and Shigeo Tanaka before making a decision, with a
   leaning towards favoring digestMultibase for downstream specifications.
   - *Align With UNTP Digital Identity Anchor:* The group committed to
   ensuring compatibility and alignment with the UNTP Digital Identity Anchor
   work. This will involve reviewing Steve Capell's use cases and mapping them
   to the specification, with a goal of making the specification a recognized
   entity VC profile.
   - *Create Example For Concurrent Use:* The need for an example
   demonstrating the concurrent use of recognizedTo and recognizedIn
   properties was identified. It was noted that the spec likely supports this,
   and the main requirement is to create a concrete example.

*Action Items:*

   - Phil Archer will add the agenda item for publishing the Recognized
   Entities specification as an FPWD to tomorrow's call.
   - Manu Sporny will send an email to Ivon regarding the renaming of the
   Recognized Entities GitHub repository.
   - Manu Sporny will raise an issue on the core data model spec regarding
   the decision to support both digestSRI and digestMultibase.
   - Steve Capell will provide details on what is needed from the group to
   confidently refer to the specification in the context of the UNTP Digital
   Identity Anchor work.
   - Steve Capell will bring forward the use cases for the Digital Identity
   Anchor to the next meeting for detailed review against the specification.
   - Manu Sporny will raise an issue regarding the use of recognizedIn when
   the recognized entity is a national business register or similar.
   - Manu Sporny will create an example demonstrating the concurrent use of
   recognizedTo and recognizedIn.

HTML:
https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-vcwg-entity-recognition-2026-04-28.html

Video:
https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-vcwg-entity-recognition-2026-04-28.mp4

[image: W3C] <https://www.w3.org/>
VCWG Entity Recognition 28 April 2026 Attendees

Present

Benjamin Young, Dave Longley, Kayode Ezike, Kevin Dean, Manu Sporny, Parth
Bhatt, Phil Archer, Steve Capell, Ted Thibodeau Jr

Regrets

-

Chair

-

Scribe

transcriber
Contents

   1. Spec Renaming Poll Results <#73bc>
   2. Update Pull Request For Renaming <#6378>
   3. Publish Recognized Entities Specification <#61c8>
   4. Digest SRI vs Digest Multibase <#842a>
   5. Add `digestSRI` property to General Properties by shigeya · Pull
   Request #69 · w3c/vc-recognized-entities · GitHub <#511b>
   6. Align With UNTP Digital Identity Anchor <#de7c>
   7. Ensure compatibility with UNTP Digital Identity Anchor work · Issue
   #48 · w3c/vc-recognized-entities · GitHub <#f573>
   8. Create Example For Concurrent Use <#e714>
   9. Create an example showing both `recognizedTo` and `recognizedIn` used
   concurrently. · Issue #52 · w3c/vc-recognized-entities · GitHub <#a945>

Meeting minutes

Manu Sporny: Hey folks, we'll get started in about three minutes. Good to
see You as well, Phil. It's late for you.

Phil Archer: That's all right. Don't worry. I got to turn it to some of
these calls. I can't do all of them, but I can do this one.

Manu Sporny: This is bedtime stories for you, right? We're going to lull
you off to Dreamland.

Phil Archer: I'm hoping you're going to be reading me the graph below and
we'll look through it, please. Yes.

Manu Sporny: All right, let's go ahead and get started. We have some front
matter to get through. thank you Benjamin for covering this call while I
was gone last week. I did read up on the minutes. so looks like y'all made
some good progress on a few items. so let's go ahead and get started.
reminder to everyone that the call is recorded and transcribed and an auto
summary is sent out to the mailing list. please let us know if that is not
okay with you. hopefully that's okay with everyone on the call.
Spec Renaming Poll Results

Manu Sporny: We do have kind of a high level agenda today which includes
going over the results of the spec renaming poll. I think you did it last
week and we have I think completion on the poll. It's closed now. so we
just need to go over that I think one more time to make sure everyone's
okay with the changes. There is a spec renaming pull request out there. and
then we hopefully at this point have what we need to request a first public
working draft. So the thing that we needed to settle was the name of the
spec because that sets in the short name and it's minutia.

Manu Sporny: But once we get that out there, we'll have a first public
working draft and then we can, talk about all the other bigger work that
needs to happen. we can talk about kind of the timeline on publication of
that thing, who's going to get it ready to go. and then once that is in
process we can talk about what it's going to take to get horizontal review
on this document right the timing around that we need to do a threat model
there is threat modeling work happening in other task forces that's going
to help us there so reviewing a bit of that and then we can just go and
process issues

Manu Sporny: That is the suggested agenda. does anyone have any changes or
updates to that agenda or anything else that they would like to discuss
today? All right. So, let's go ahead with that agenda then. I'm going to go
ahead and the results here. So, one second, let me screen share. And please
correct me if I missed something in the minutes. I think I read everything,
but there was a concern last time of we need we should make sure we get
enough ballots At this point, they're 12 ballots in. I think that's
everyone that participates in the group.

Manu Sporny: I messed up the first time I used instant runoff voting. it
was supposed to be a board account. Borda is when you have small number of
p people picking among a large number of choices. and then in conorset
borda is a super complicated tallying mechanism that runs every single
possibility against every other one and then kind of ranks them. But it's a
better way to be really sure about what was picked. But it's really hard to
explain it to people. because this giant matrix looks really scary to most
people and most voters would run screaming if they saw this. okay.

Manu Sporny: But even if we do instant runoff voting or rank choice voting
I think we get the same result which was recognized entities winning by a
pretty large margin. We can recount it using San Francisco rank choice
voting which is

Manu Sporny: a preferred one in elections. Although this one comes out with
verifiable recognition credentials, but it's kind of neck and neck, I
think. actually no, it was recognized entities ends up winning in this one
as well. because this gets transferred up to recognized entities. And then
if we go and we do a board account, we get the same result. I think
although it's really hard to see, right? But recognized entities ends up
being the one with the most number of votes verifiable recognition 157.
This one's got 120. And then, everything below that. And then the condorset
borda is supposedly the best way to decide an election like the one that we
had.

Manu Sporny: then that comes out with the same kind of result with
recognized entities out on top. So the first question is do people feel
like the result was fairly clear in all the different ways that we could
have tallied the vote? Or does anyone have any questions about anything I
just said?

Steve Capell: All good.

Manu Sporny: All So that means that the choice at least for now is
recognized entities. and we should update the spec with that title and
modify the short name accordingly. And with that we can finally ask for a
first public working draft which should happen on the call tomorrow. any
questions on any of that?

Manu Sporny: Go ahead, Phil, please.

Phil Archer: Do you want me to put it on the agenda for tomorrow,…

Phil Archer: which I can do.

Manu Sporny: Yes, as long as nobody objects to the poll requests that we're
about to review to rename the spec. Yes. …

Phil Archer> LGTM

Phil Archer: It's clear from your previous conversation that no one is. So
that's fine. I will do it now while we're talking.

Manu Sporny: Thank you very much. this is what this group decided. I don't
know if the group is interested in getting the opinion of the broader
verifiable credential working group or the really broad credentials
community group to see if they would make a different choice.

Steve Capell: Let's get on with it.
Update Pull Request For Renaming

Manu Sporny: Not having nearly as much information as we do or are we
tempting fate by doing that and we should just get on with it. And then
Dave's suggesting the same thing. All right. let's do that then. That's the
name of the spec. we're moving with that said, here is the pull request
that applies The title would be changed to entity recognition version 1.0.
and the subtitle would be VCs for recognized entities and the actions they
Realize the wording is different there.

Manu Sporny: We can change the subtitle at any point. The main thing that
sticks is this thing and then the short name which we have two choices.
recognition we could do that or we could do if we wanted something really
short or there are many variations in there that we could pick from. Let me
start off with would anybody object if this was the short name that we
picked VC entity recognition? Go ahead, Dave. …

Dave Longley: Didn't the poll say recognized entities?

Benjamin Young: Yeah, that was another choice that didn't get

Manu Sporny: did I mess up? I might have done that.

Dave Longley: Yeah, I think entity recognition was some other had another
problem with it. Yes.

Manu Sporny: This is why we review these things. it was Recognized
entities. Okay. Thank you very much.

Phil Archer: I was going to say the same thing.

Phil Archer: Thank you, David. And I mean the reason it matters is first of
all we've been through a sophisticated and…

Manu Sporny: That was a complete oversight on my part.

Phil Archer: detailed voting process. So the outcome of that and as Dave
said entity recognition means something else in an adjacent techn technical
field.

Manu Sporny: Yes. Thank you very much for catching that. and then I will
recognize Jeez, how many of these are there in here? there's some space
removal that's going on here. That is unfortunate but recognized entities.
And the rest of this is there you can't see any change here because it's
just this character at the end of the line was deleted.

Manu Sporny: I think same thing for this thing. I'll try to clear that so
with that, does anybody have any issues with the correct name, the VR? Me
apply these suggestion. how can I? Yeah, there we Add suggestion to batch.
It's very good to know that people are paying attention in the call. thank
you.

Manu Sporny: Okay, so this recognized entities, it's the of Our short name
is VC is for recognized entities and the actions they perform. Does that
look right to folks? getting a thumbs No objections. All right. let's go
ahead and actually can we get a couple of thumbs ups in just a positive
reviews on this to make sure that we got approvals. There's a link there.

Manu Sporny> Applies the result of the spec renaming poll by msporny · Pull
Request #70 · w3c/vc-recognized-entities · GitHub
<https://github.com/w3c/vc-recognition/pull/70>
Publish Recognized Entities Specification

Manu Sporny: And if you just go in there and do a positive review and then
if we could get at least one more. There we go. Thank you. All that is
ready. I'm going to squash it because the initial PR was All right. Hooray.
It is renamed. All right.

Manu Sporny: I think Phil the proper process is to just pull the group for
publish the recognized entities specification as a first public working
draft I got to put the link in there. I'm going to change I should rename
the repository.

Manu Sporny: Let me do that real quick just to make sure that let me see
recognized entities and…

Phil Archer: Before you do that hang on my hesitation is only that I don't
know whether that will cascade through to the working group homepage and…

Manu Sporny: that is going to mess up the URL. heat.

Phil Archer: all the other stuff that Ivan will have to do. So I think what
you're doing is right. I'm not suggesting you don't change the name, but
rather you did it tomorrow on the call with Ivan there so that he could
recognize that he needs then either to manually change something or check
that it automatically worked or whatever.

Manu Sporny: Unfortunately, I already hit the button to rename it.

Phil Archer: Then it's too late and…

Manu Sporny: But I will send that you make an excellent point,…

Phil Archer: I'm looking for any reason. I'm sorry.

Manu Sporny: Phil. I will send Avon an email and go, "Oops. Does anything
need to change?" what I was trying to do is get the correct URL into the
resolution text. so let me save this and…

Phil Archer: Yeah. Yeah.

Manu Sporny: then it will take a little bit to publish. no, it's already
done. There it is. okay.

Manu Sporny: Publish the recognized entity specification. yeah,…

Phil Archer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Manu Sporny: apologies, That wasn't good. let's see. Publish the recognized
entity specification, with a short name of VC recognized entities.

Manu Sporny: I think that's all we need. Isn't that right?

Phil Archer: Yeah, because you got to do it again tomorrow.

Phil Archer: So that's right.

Manu Sporny: Okay. All right. So, there's the Yep.

Phil Archer: Just so as I suspected, the repo you're working in has
changed, but the working group list of task forces and tools within the
task force has not changed automatically. So that's a note to the group now
pointing to that dock.

Manu Sporny: We'll need to update it. All right. I'll let me open an email
to Ivon right now to ask him on rename obvious recognition GitHub repo.

Dave Longley> GitHub - w3c/vc-recognized-entities: Verifiable credentials
for recognizing entities and the actions they perform. · GitHub
<https://github.com/w3c/vc-recognition> -- this redirects properly

Phil Archer: So if anyone has a chance to read it before tomorrow, so much
the better.

Manu Sporny: Thank you, So, there's the poll there. we can + one minus one
plus Z to your heart's content. All right. And then Steve, Phil, Kevin, if
y'all could plus one, we'll have a more complete just in the chat channel.

Phil Archer: I'm

Manu Sporny> POLL: Publish the Recognized Entities specification (
https://w3c.github.io/vc-recognized-entities/>) as a FPWD with a short name
of vc-recognized-entities.

Phil Archer: I'm trying to be chairman and…

Dave Longley> https://w3c.github.io/vc-recognition> -- this does not.

Steve Capell: Where do I do that?

Manu Sporny: You can open up the chat on the side,…

Steve Capell: All right. Okay. Yeah.

Manu Sporny: Steve. I got you.

Phil Archer: so, I'm happy to see it happen, but I'm trying to be neutral.

Manu Sporny: No problem.

Manu Sporny> +1

Phil Archer: Not that I have any attention.

Dave Longley> +1

Manu Sporny: Okay.

Parth Bhatt> +1

Kayode Ezike> +1

Phil Archer: Of course, I don't.

Benjamin Young> +1

Manu Sporny: So, I think we've got the poll and then we've got the plus
ones. Hopefully, that follows the new process we agreed to a couple of
weeks ago in the BCWG. And that. Thank you everyone very much for sticking
with that weird process we had to do. But it's good that we picked
something. Okay. let's see what pull requests if any We have one open poll
request. So let's go ahead and talk about that.

Kevin Dean> +1
Digest SRI vs Digest Multibase

Manu Sporny: I guess I'm going to topic this item. Hopefully that'll work.
So, Shaga Sun opened issue 68 which basically says, "Hey, you talk about
digest multibase but you don't talk about digest SRRI." and then he opened
a pull request that would address the issue that he raised. digest. the
differences between these two items for those that might not know is that
they're just different ways of expressing a cryptographic hash about a
resource that exists somewhere in the world, So that usually you use it
when you want to point to something like you want to point to an image and
you want to make sure that that image doesn't change.

Steve Capell> +1

Manu Sporny: And if it does change that the person knows that the one you
pointed to and the one that they're looking at are different images, So
that is why we use cryptographic hashes of files online. it is very useful
for other things like pointing to a way bill or an invoice or something
like that that you want to be very specific about the one that you're
pointing to. so that if it is changed or tampered with you you have a
signal saying that that's happened. why does digest srri and digest
multibase exist? Why do we have two ways to do the same thing? in the
verifiable credentials 10 work or no maybe it was the one work. we couldn't
agree on how to express this information.
Add `digestSRI` property to General Properties by shigeya · Pull Request
#69 · w3c/vc-recognized-entities · GitHub
<https://github.com/w3c/vc-recognized-entities/pull/69>

Manu Sporny: Digest SRRI is how web browsers tend to be very limited in the
cryptographic hash mechanisms that they allow. In fact, I think it's just
Shawu 256, 384 and 512 that they allow. there are many other types of
cryptographic hashing algorithms. Digis multibase supports a very large
variety of cryptographic hash algorithms like Blake and other kind of more
modern mechanisms. Digest SRRI very small set of available choices, but
they're all fairly universally supported and accepted. Digest multibase is
much broader in what it would allow.

Manu Sporny: But we typically try to limit it to kind of the same things
that are used in digests SRRI while allowing people to make different
choices in communities that need to make different choices. okay so we just
used digest multibase in this spec. she is suggesting we should use digest
srri. I think yall took a look at it and approved I'm opposed to it but I'm
not going to object. I don't think we need two different ways of doing it
here.

Manu Sporny: I don't think we should repeat the same mistake that we made
in the VC data model core spec. but both mech mechanisms are simple enough
to implement. I guess the main question I have is why multibase covers
digest SRRI and…

Manu Sporny: more I guess why do we need both ways? go ahead Benjamin.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, I think the main thing to know from Shagaya is…

Benjamin Young: if somebody he knows is using digest because unfortunately
it is in the foundational spec so somebody could be and Yeah, they're going
to wonder like he did why it's not in here. I agree it's unfortunate that
they're both in the data model. So I think just because he submitted it, is
it asking him whether or not he was cleaning it up because he's aware of it
and these don't match or if it's like I use this and it should be here.
that would be helpful.

Benjamin Young: But it is I don't know we'll face this across all the specs
render method will face it as well if it isn't already

Manu Sporny: Thank you, Plus one to that. go ahead, Steve.

Steve Capell: Just a quick question.

Steve Capell: These are self-describing hashes, right? So whether it's
multibase or whether it's SRRI, you can see because it's written there in
this case 6256 in the multibbase case a letter code and they're non-over
overlapping in other words if I put a hash by inspection of the hash I can
see that's a multibase. Is that right? So there's no collision here. It's
just more than one way of doing it. Yeah.

Manu Sporny: Yeah. I think the argument against having both of them is
ecosystem complexity and…

Manu Sporny: I think some could argue that ship already sailed and…

Steve Capell: Yeah. Mhm.

Manu Sporny: others could argue no we can still remove features in the
future if we see that people haven't implemented it but you're right
there's no collision here someone will either use digest SRRI or they'll
use digest multibase or they'll use both of them and nothing bad happens
other than all software systems have to be more complicated because of it
because we didn't pick one

Steve Capell: So what I don't know is how ubiquitous these two digest
self-describing digest methods are in the wide world.

Steve Capell: are we including something that's hardly used anywhere, in
which case I'd be against, or are we including something that is very
widely used somewhere, in which case there's a bit of a risk of excluding
it,…

Manu Sporny: Plus one. Those are exactly the right questions to ask. and we
don't know because we haven't done a I don't know…

Steve Capell: right?

Manu Sporny: if we know how to get data on that, other than maybe work with
system vendors that have a tremendous amount of data in their systems and
even then it's kind of like you don't know if you've got everything. The
way we did this for, JasonLD is that there's a common crawl data set that,…

Steve Capell: Sure.

Manu Sporny: scour hundreds of millions of websites and we got very good
data back on what features were used and which ones were not. But then the
argument became like, yeah, but that's all the public data. You don't know
anything about what the private data is. So, this kind of stuff is really
difficult to figure out who's actually using these things. the only time
you really find out is when you go to remove the feature and all of a
sudden you get a bunch of angry emails from a community you never knew
existed, turns out they depend heavily on whatever thing you're about to
remove. go ahead, Phil.

Phil Archer: Sorry, I think that is the kind of thing that it's worth
bringing to the wider group. I mean, as everyone here knows, we've just
been through not just the recharging process, but what happened at the end
of last week was all the people who didn't renew or couldn't renew or we
decided not to renew their invited expert status, whatever it may be,
they've all gone. But a lot of people have joined. It's still an enormous
group. and whilst whatever size the group, it's a tiny fraction, we hope,
of the people using the technology, it's a bigger group than we've got here
right now.

Phil Archer: So it might just be worth raising it tomorrow and I think in
general this kind of thing is what the whole working group call can help
with that because you got a specific question for a specific feature and
you're talking about either including or removing it and I think that's
what the working group call can help with.

Manu Sporny: Yeah, plus one to that. And I think it's probably, the form of
the question is, do we want to deprecate digest multibase in the core
verifi VC spec? we didn't make a choice before. there's some advantages of
one over the other. Do we want to remove it before it gets even more out of
hand or…

Phil Archer: Yep.

Manu Sporny: or do we want to keep it And I think as my prediction is we're
just going to leave it the way it is because that's the easiest thing to do
and it's the least controversial and so on so forth. but it doesn't mean we
have to duplicate that in other specs we made the mistake in BC data model.
my position is do we want to make the same mistake here? I'm arguing unless
we have very good reason we shouldn't do it and…

Manu Sporny: maybe we need to document that we made a conscious decision
not to support it here. go ahead Benjamin.

Benjamin Young: So I think the downstream specs…

Benjamin Young: if the group decides they could pick a lane in terms of
what they promote and talk about essentially in their specs u picking one
of the digest formats. I don't think there's anything in the stack that's
gonna prevent the use of the other ones from the upstream data model spec
and I don't think we could deprecate it but we can't rip it out in a 2.1.
so it's still going to be there for a while.

Benjamin Young: So, it really comes down to kind of what we want to signal
as the working group going forward, which may actually work best if we look
like we're aware of what we're doing and say, the group has decided to
deprecate digest SRRI as of 2.1 or however this shakes out. and so please
don't use that. it's totally possible, but please don't. or even if it's
not fully deprecated, we're aware that there's another format, certainly
you could use it. This spec's only going to talk about this one because
reasons

Manu Sporny: Yeah, plus one of that. I'll go ahead and raise an issue on
the core data model spec. let me see. chose to support both digest SRRI and
digest multibase in the core data model. This is causing downstream
specifications to attempt to support both. the features are equivalent
enough that ideally only one is I shouldn't say they're really equivalent
enough the features are

Benjamin Young: I'd point to the fact that digest multi-base is extensible
and already supports more formats. SRRI only exists in browsers and is,
really restricted to what they either have done or feel like they want to
do over a weekend. so multibase is mutable and updatable by this community
as well as anywhere else whereas digest SRRI is a fixed thing of the path.

Manu Sporny: and has a registry for new multi-ash formats as they are
created. broader graphic agility when it comes to graphic mesh formats.

Manu Sporny: The suggestion is to pick digest multibase going forward for
downstream specifications and include a deprecation notice in v2.1 for
digest SRRI and then this needs discussion and

Manu Sporny: This would be a class to change. we'll take this…

Manu Sporny: if something comes of it.

Dave Longley: I was too late.

Dave Longley: I was going to say when you said restricted to browsers, do
you want to say restricted to requiring two browser implementations? And
that's where the spec Yeah.

Manu Sporny: Browser implementations. for four new cryptographic hash
formats. So we'll put that is it eternal w Yeah.

Benjamin Young: They've reumbered it, so now there's a dash two in it. and
I can't quite tell where it's happening. web app looks like… Benjamin Young:

Manu Sporny: Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Young: but the two is now overwriting one but if you go to the
standards history it looks like there's an SRRI one which was 2016 so they
rebooted the work in last April Come on.

Manu Sporny: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And It goes to CSP3 I guess which is a
working draft and as we can see the hash algorithm you can only use SHA 2
256 384 or 512 that's it no Blake no Shaw 3 no no Poseidon none of the
other cryptographic hashes

Manu Sporny: Yeah,…

Benjamin Young: and…

Benjamin Young: notably there's not a way to add more.

Manu Sporny: I mean you have to be a browser manufacturer and you have to
implement it and the way to add more is you update the spec and publish a
new recommendation, right? It's a pretty heavyweight process.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, you have to update this spec.

Manu Sporny: Literally this highlighted text. All right. raised the
tracking issue here. Yes.

Manu Sporny: and good luck trying to convince them to implement Blake or
Poseidon. All So, we looked at that and the digest SRRI thing. We will wait
for the BCWG to decide what they're going to do before figuring out what we
want to do here. And then we definitely want to hear from Shik Sunan to see
if we see what he thinks. I think those are all of the PRs that we have.
bouncing really quickly over to issues. this one does have a PR that exists
here exists.

Manu Sporny: No, we don't have that label. I want to add that. All right.
are there any particular issues that people want to change document title.
We'll have to modify or I mean that's taken care of now. ensure
compatibility with digital identity anchor work.

Manu Sporny: Steve, I don't know if you want to chat about that today or if
there are any updates there.

Steve Capell: Yeah. I…
Align With UNTP Digital Identity Anchor

Steve Capell> I owe you a use case PR - will have it ready for next
meeeting.

Steve Capell: what I'd like So it's a bit of a question to this group, UNP
is just about to enter public review and in about two months or three
months we'll be saying, "Okay, here's 1.0." I'd kind of like to before we
get into 1.0 go not have two specs and al more like UNP align with this
than the other way around, but just make sure both use cases are met, And
so how does the timing work with this group? We've got a fairly complete
candidate spec already, right? Because people have been working on it for a
while.

Steve Capell: I don't know how many alternative opinions and objections
that might arise that might change it a bit, but do you think I'm fairly
safe to map digital identity anchor to this now and say it works identify
if there are any gaps or issues that we raise issues and get through them
quickly so that in 3 months time when we release UNP 1.0 No, we can say the
digital identity anchor is a recognized entity VC.
Ensure compatibility with UNTP Digital Identity Anchor work · Issue #48 ·
w3c/vc-recognized-entities · GitHub
<https://github.com/w3c/vc-recognized-entities/issues/48>

Manu Sporny: plus one for attempting that so I want to say yes absolutely
let's get it done. but we know that we are just a handful of people and
other people are going to have opinions, especially once we publish the
first public working draft and some people might have really strong
opinions and I don't think we want to destabilize your work at UNP. Steve,
you and the working group's work at UNPT. long term, I think we're all on
the same page.

Manu Sporny: We want all of this stuff to align. and to make sure that we
are doing that,…

Phil Archer: Perfect.

Manu Sporny: I think exactly what you said, we have to make sure that we
support all of your use cases. That will take time for us to go through. We
can certainly prioritize that we can just say all the calls for the next
couple of weeks is just going to be on alignment with UNP and digital
identity chor. and the goal there is to make sure that you can say the
things that you want to be able to say there and either point to this spec
or at least suggest this is the direction the work's headed in. so I think
philosophically we're definitely all aligned on aligning. the only
challenge is that the W3C process is going to lag pretty considerably from
the UNP work. So I'll stop there. go ahead.

Dave Longley> +1 identifying gaps / issues through attempted alignment
would be great

Phil Archer: Yeah, just to two things. Yes. So Steve, this you'll be able
to refer to it as a stable URI once the first public working draft is
published,…

Steve Capell: That's all right.

Phil Archer: which I imagine will be in week next. but it won't be a
recommendation by that time as the manager said a long time to go. but what
I put my hand up for was man slightly concerned. It sounds as if you are
expecting push back. is that true? And if so, is there a way that we can
head that off or talk to the relevant people?

Manu Sporny: No, I'm not expecting push back. sorry if it made it sound
like that. we've been through this enough where every shadow scares us, so
I'm concerned that once the work's out there and the FBWD is out there we
are very much going to start folding this into production systems and
that's the point at which I think we will have real contact with people
that might have different opinions. so for example, it is very much
expected that we're going to use this in the education space in the United
States. it is very much expected that we're going to use it in the vital
records space. they may be some work on using it in driver's licenses.

Manu Sporny: there are fairly powerful lobbies in each one of those areas
that are active in the standard space that might have very strong opinions
on what else we should be doing. So for example with MDL and that sort of
thing they have very much picked X509 and VCAL and those sorts of things
and what I'm expecting them to do is just totally ignore this work but they
might also say no we're going to come in there and we think you should
change so that's the only reason like I don't want that kind of stuff to
destabilize the

Manu Sporny: work that Steve's doing. I think there's a very small
possibility of that, 10 to 15% chance that somebody decides to pick a fight
with this spec. and I don't know if any of them are going to. I expect them
to just try and ignore the work.

Manu Sporny: At least in version 10.

Phil Archer: Yeah, I mean my general view is…

Phil Archer: if you're not going to implement something then keep your
mouth shut because it doesn't matter to you. it's only if you are
implementing it and the spec says you got to do something you don't want to
do now then you got a reason to complain but if you're not actually
personally using I mean there's a whole bunch of specs that my day job
company doesn't like but hey we don't implement them so knock yourself out
I don't care what you do we're not going to do it but that doesn't mean to
say

Steve Capell: Talking about that,…

Steve Capell: Phil, GS1 is already in pilot mode issuing sort of
recognition of member prefix right soon.

Phil Archer: Soon next month.

Steve Capell: All And are you also as with your GS1 hat on now planning to
use this spec for that?

Phil Archer: I imagine so. I need to look at it more carefully. but yes, I
mean in general terms what you've outlined to us many times…

Steve Capell: Yeah. So that's another Yeah.

Phil Archer: then yes that's where I see it going one way or…

Steve Capell: That's another motivation for us to make sure DIA and this
DIA ideally is just a profile of this, right? Yeah.

Phil Archer: the other. Yeah. Yes.

Phil Archer: I mean ideally of course they're the same but I mean that
ideal is never quite reached but yes as we've discussed this before

Steve Capell: Cool.

Manu Sporny: I mean, that's great. and again, I mean, I think that
underscores that philosophically we're all in alignment of the kind of the
direction. So, Steve, I think what we need from you is for you to tell us
what you need to refer to it and feel comfortable about referring to it,
and we'll kind of figure it out over the next couple of months and if at
the last second you're just like, it's just we can't do it in this version
of the spec.

Manu Sporny: I don't think there will be any hard feelings that no, we're
all trying to do the best that we can and get the most stable stuff out
there. so maybe Steve, this is an action to you. Let us know what you need
from us. Tell us…

Steve Capell: Yeah, we'll do Okay,…

Manu Sporny: what kind, talk with your group. Tell us the type of reference
they want to make to this document. and then we will do our best to get it
in the right shape and hold the line to give you the stability that you
need in the work that you're doing.

Steve Capell: we'll take that action.

Manu Sporny: And thank you A great call out and thanks to everyone for
being in philosophical alignment. that is one of the most important things
to have when it comes to these kinds of alignment activities. Okay. So how
about this in the next meeting please remind me Steve let's talk about the
use cases that you have with digital identity anchor. let's look at the
spec and make sure that it has the features to align to those use cases.

Manu Sporny: And then we'll just work through that stuff and we will know
that we have done our job when we get through all your use cases and we
feel very certain that the spec as it stands supports them. If it doesn't
we will raise issues to try and…

Steve Capell: Awesome. Thank you.

Manu Sporny: make sure that it anything else on this issue before we move
on to at least one more today? All right. If not, let's go ahead and move
on. And in theory, this entire conversation we had will be added down here
when the minutes are published. we got that working as well. All right,
let's look at another discuss item. use cases and applications for this
data model. I'm going to suggest that we're going to cover some of that
with the discussion we'll have with Steve on the next call.
Create Example For Concurrent Use

Manu Sporny: Then let me make sure that there's some other use cases stuff
that we're going to want to cover, but we'll focus the next co call on use
cases. and then create an example showing both recognized to and recognized
in being used concurrently. we need to fill this out a bit more. Let me put
a topic marker in here. I think the spec supports this today. Is that
correct? and we just don't have an example for it. recognized in So, we
support this in the data model today.

Manu Sporny: And I think we are just looking for an example that contains
both of them. So we have recognized twos in here but recognized in we don't
have recognized too. So I think it's quite literally just add example four.
is that what everyone else is understanding this issue to be about. All
right.

Manu Sporny: That includes both recognized to and recognized in. do we have
a use case that would make this easier to someone will have to think about
it but go ahead Dave.

Dave Longley: So I don't have a specific use case, but this is just the
case…
Create an example showing both `recognizedTo` and `recognizedIn` used
concurrently. · Issue #52 · w3c/vc-recognized-entities · GitHub
<https://github.com/w3c/vc-recognized-entities/issues/52>

Dave Longley: where you're making it possible for people to bootstrap into
existing systems or just read from this data model. And it's just
supportive of both of those concurrently.

Manu Sporny: The example bridges both worlds old trust list approach.

Manu Sporny: And new recognized entities. So, let's say that that is ready
for PR and hopefully we'll get someone raising a PR on that. with that, I
think those are all of our discuss issues. we'll go ahead and I'll close
this after the call. because we did pick a document title.

Manu Sporny: We'll make another pass through the issues and then next week
we will focus on use cases with a strong focus on the digital identity
anchor work and just working through all of the use cases Steve that you
have. and then if we find any gaps we'll raise issues and start adjusting
in that way. we will also have a better handle on when the first public
working graph publication's being done. and then we will probably want to
start talking about threat model as well if we get through use cases. But
we are probably going to spend almost all the call talking about use cases.
that is the proposed agenda for the Any other last thoughts, …

Manu Sporny: comments, concerns before we end the call for

Steve Capell: I'd ask a question about recognized in it…

Steve Capell: if I understand that right this is basically saying this
entity is listed over here somewhere else and…

Steve Capell: it's a pointer to that other thing that list and it's saying
at the moment it should be an Etsy trust service list or an X59 certificate
authority list or a verifiable recognition credential …

Manu Sporny: Exactly right.

Steve Capell: what if the thing that the entity is recognized in is a
national business register Manu Sporny:

Manu Sporny: That is a great question. we could Are these typed things
today? I forget. recognized.

Dave Longley: I believe they're typed.

Kayode Ezike> Would the presence of both properties serve as a union or an
intersection?

Manu Sporny: Yeah. Yeah. but the type value is defined external to the
spec,…

Manu Sporny: No, it's not. Is It could be. So, this is a great question,
Steve, because we need to make this decision. it would probably be a bad
idea for us to elaborate on all the different external types that there
could be for example we could add a national business registry as a type in
here…

Steve Capell: Yeah. Yeah,…

Manu Sporny: but that is probably not our place like if somebody wants to
create a different type of authority list or business register or something
like that. Mhm.

Dave Longley> a union, though a consumer would likely do choose your own
adventure

Steve Capell: I think the function of the register is distinct from how the
register is represented, right?

Steve Capell: So whether it's a national business register or trademark
register or asset register or whatever it is, it's a register…

Manu Sporny: Mhm. Yeah.

Steve Capell: but it's almost certainly not maintained as a certificate
authority list or a verifiable credential recognition credential because
it's got 2 million entries and it has 2,000 changes a day. so

Steve Capell: in this spec how do you say this entity is defined in by this
registar then maybe there's another place to say that I don't know

Manu Sporny: Yeah, it's a good point.

Manu Sporny: Do we need an issue for this? yes, we probably do. go ahead,
Dave.

Dave Longley: I don't remember if we have this in the spec already, but
another extension capability here would be to just express the media type
of the file because this just points to external files and…

Manu Sporny: Yep.

Dave Longley: if those registries define their format in that way then a
client Client that understands that media type can get the resource, parse
it, and then learn about what type of registry it is from in there and do
whatever it is they need to do.

Phil Archer: on the business register side just to note that the German
business register the Bundesan Saiger Valard is in the process of joining
the group and Casten Stalker who many of he works that's his biggest
customer so there's a good connection coming in there and Steve the New
Zealand business number will be issued as a VC. That's what they're working
on. I think they can do it now…

Steve Capell: Yeah, because they use GLNs.

Phil Archer: because he use GL.

Phil Archer: But then there's a whole connection there between GS1 New
Zealand and…

Steve Capell: Yeah. Yeah.

Phil Archer: this is so the shape of a hoped for near future pilot with GS1
identifiers and the Bundesan Ziga and MB in New Zealand and…

Phil Archer: all these business registers is something that we hope is
going to happen within a matter of months. Hope not sure.

Steve Capell: Yeah, and…

Steve Capell: perhaps with the Spanish Business Register and the Indian
Business Register as well…

Steve Capell: because they're coming at this from the DIA side. So, it
would be nice to bring them all together. Okay.

Phil Archer: Great. Yeah.

Phil Archer: Yeah. Yeah.

Manu Sporny: Absolutely. All right.

Manu Sporny: I'll raise the issue right after the call. with that we're at
time. thank you everyone very much. we will meet again next week to talk
about the digital identity anchor use cases and work through whether or…

Phil Archer: Talk to you tomorrow. Bye-bye.

Manu Sporny: not the spec supports all those use cases. Thanks everyone.
Have a good one. Take care. Bye. Meeting ended after 00:57:17 👋 This
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