Add did:prism to Universal Resolver, Universal Registrar, and Godiddy.com

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Markus Sabadello

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

office@danubetech.com

Additional applicants

• Bernhard Fuchs
• Stevan Eraković
• Zaïda Rivai
• Azeem Ahamed

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

6

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

Yes

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.” .

This project has a dependency on the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) insofar as the two open-source projects Universal Resolver and Universal Registrar are official DIF work items. Some results of this project will therefore be contributed to DIF as open-source software under the Apache 2.0 license. Since DIF is widely know in the SSI community and has hundreds of members, we consider this a very beneficial relationship that will help to expose did:prism to a key community beyond the Cardano ecosystem.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

No

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

The work on did:prism "drivers" for the Universal Resolver and Universal Registrar applications (i.e. work done under Milestones 1 and 2, see below) will be fully open-source. This will allow anyone to host instances of these tools and work with did:prism. Some additional work will also be done on Godiddy.com, which is a commercial platform (i.e. work done under Milestone 3). This part will include tracking and analytics of did:prism. Even though this code will not be fully open-source, the resulting analytics (in SVG file format or similar) will be released under a Creative Commons license.

[METADATA] Category of proposal

Identity Solutions

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

We are relatively new to the Atala PRISM and wider Cardano ecosystem, but are excited to see the development and adoption of the did:prism DID method. We believe that identifiers always constitute the essential foundation of any digital identity systems, including SSI. We need ways to address and refer to individuals, organizations, and things, in order to be able to establish connections and relationships, to share data and messages, and to establish higher-level concepts such as trust and reputation. The W3C DID standard has been created to provide identifiers based on decentralized technologies.

The introduction of the Atala PRISM DID method is exciting insofar as it introduces a new way of resolving/creating/managing DIDs, with all the benefits of the Cardano technology. We have already contributed in a small consulting role to the development of the did:prism specification.

We believe that the next step is to build essential tools which make it easy to work with did:prism, and to make such tools available to higher-level technical building blocks such as Verifiable Credentials, OpenID4VCI, DIDComm, Decentralized Web Nodes, and more.

We have worked on implementing DIDs for several years. Our approach has always been to build an "abstraction layer", or in other words, a universal interface that makes it possible to work with DIDs of any DID method, such as did:indy, did:ethr, did:ebsi, did:web, did:ion, did:cheqd, etc. This makes it easy to achieve interoperability between different underlying networks, and to replace one with another if needed. For this purpose, we have worked on the open-source tools Universal Resolver and Universal Registrar, which are work items at the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF). These tools can be self-hosted, in order to be able to use DIDs without a need for central authorities or intermediaries.

Our proposal now is to add support for did:prism to these existing tools. This will make the use of did:prism immediately available to SSI applications, services, and developers which are already using the Universal Resolver/Registrar components. This will be done in the form of so-called "drivers" that can be plugged into these components.

In addition, we also operate a SaaS platform called Godiddy.com. Our proposal also contains a task and milestone to add support for did:prism to this platform, which will make did:prism even more accessible to developers and SSI solution providers. We would like to mention that even though Godiddy.com is a closed-source commercial platform, it is based on the open-source components mentioned above, and the APIs are being developed as open specifications. This platform includes functionality for tracking and analyzing DIDs, which can be viewed at https://stats.godiddy.com/. The new DID method did:prism will also be included in these analytics and visualizations.

We expect this project to have a major impact not only within the existing Atala PRISM community, but also beyond it. We are already involved in several high-profile SSI projects in the EU, US, and other parts of the world, and this project will also enable us to introduce did:prism to our existing projects, side-by-side with other DID methods.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

We want to make it easier to create and use did:prism DIDs. What is unique about the Universal Resolver and Universal Registrar open-source projects is that they allow resolution, creation and management of DIDs of various types using a single universal interface; in other words, an abstraction layer.

This way, applications, service, and clients can easily adopt new types of DIDs, or switch between them, without changing the interface they use for doing that. This works today with a wide variety of DIDs (some are blockchain based, others are not), and this proposed project will add support for did:prism as an additional option, and make this DID method immediately available to existing SSI developers.

The second objective is to gain insights into the usage of did:prism DIDs (as compared to other types of DIDs). By adding support for did:prism to our DID statistics and analytics page (https://stats.godiddy.com/), we will be able to visualize did:prism usage as compared to other types of DIDs.

For additional benefits for the Cardano ecosystem, see next question.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

We believe we will be able to measure the success of the project in two ways:

"Internal" benefits:

The availability of the components in this project will benefit the Cardano community itself, since it will become much easier to work with did:prism identifiers, which already today form the basis for many projects in the Atala PRISM ecosystem. After completion of the work, we expect the use of did:prism to increase, and we also expect a generally growing understanding in the Cardano community of how DIDs and the relevant technical standards work:

"External" benefits:

Looking beyond Cardano itself, it is worth pointing out that the open-source Universal Resolver and Universal Registrar applications are already widely being used within the SSI community as a basis for higher-level technologies such as Verifiable Credentials, OpenID Connect, Decentralized Web Nodes, and more. Adding "drivers" for did:prism to these existing tools means that a range of existing SSI applications and services will immediately be able to work with did:prism, without having to change anything in the higher layers of their stacks. In addition to this, we also expect a general increase in awareness and understanding of did:prism, and its pros and cons as compared to other well-known DID methods.

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

By now, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) are being adopted as a basis for many other technologies (Verifiable Credentials, Decentralized Web Nodes, etc.) as well as for real-life use cases. Our company Danube Tech is already involved in many concrete initiatives which use DIDs. This includes the European Blockchain Service Infrastructure (EBSI), the European Digital Identity Wallet Consortium, Gaia-X, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP). In some of these projects, we are leading or contributing to work packages related to DID methods and interoperability. We therefore plan to communicate to these existing projects the availability of did:prism in the Universal Resolver and Universal Registrar tools, which makes DIDs immediately usable in these projects, which will potentially have very large adoption in the next few years.

In addition, we will use our relationships with various SSI-related community organizations, such as the W3C Credentials Community Group or the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), to promote the results of our work to developers who work with DIDs.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Our company Danube Tech is a pioneer in decentralized identity technologies such as Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs). We have been very active in various standardization and community groups such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF - https://identity.foundation/). We co-invented the concept of DIDs and co-authored the W3C standard. For several years now, we have been building various open-source tools as well as commercial products that make it easy to work with DIDs.

Our best-known open-source project is the Universal Resolver, a tool that makes it possible to resolve about 50 different types of DIDs ("DID methods"). Its slightly less-known "sister project" Universal Registrar offers write operations (create/update/deactivate) for DIDs. We have been maintaining both projects reliably for many years.

With regard to capabilities related to Atala PRISM, we have actively contributed to the did:prism method specification and therefore are very familiar with how it works. See https://github.com/input-output-hk/prism-did-method-spec/blob/main/w3c-spec/PRISM-method.md

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

Our main goal is to get to a point where did:prism will be known and used beyond the Cardano community itself. We want did:prism to become available for SSI developers in the same way as those developers are now using did:indy, did:ion, did:web, did:cheqd, did: ebsi, and others. If we are successful in achieving this goal, it will be easy to switch out one of the mentioned DID methods for e.g. did:prism via the abstraction layer that our work offers. We believe in a vision of "Network of Networks" (see https://networkofnetworks.net/) where identity networks such as Atala PRISM connect seamlessly to other networks in an interoperable way.

A secondary goal is also to learn lessons for did:prism itself. By using and applying Atala PRISM DIDs in some of our own customer projects in the EU and US, we will be able to gather implementation experience and provide feedback to the did:prism method specification itself.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

We propose to execute this project in three milestones:

Milestone 1: Implement did:prism "driver" for DIF Universal Resolver (https://uniresolver.io/)

Duration: M1+M2

Tasks include:

• Evaluation of current state of did:prism method specification
• Research into existing tools and libraries that can be used
• Implementation of a did:prism "driver", based on DID Resolution interface specification
• Update of Universal Resolver configuration and frontend UI
• Writing documentation
• Interaction with Cardano and DIF communities

Milestone 2: Implement did:prism "driver" for DIF Universal Registrar (https://uniregistrar.io/)

Duration: M3+M4

Tasks include:

• Implementation of a did:prism "driver", based on DID Registration interface specification
• Update of Universal Registrar configuration and frontend UI
• Writing documentation
• Interaction with Cardano and DIF communities

Milestone 3: Add support for did:prism at Godiddy.com

Duration: M5+M6

Tasks include:

• Integration of results from Milestones 1 and 2 into the Godiddy.com platform, to enable users to resolve/create/update/deactivate Atala PRISM DIDs
• Update of Godiddy.com frontend UI
• Adding support for did:prism to analytics at https://stats.godiddy.com/

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

We propose to execute this project in three milestones:

Milestone 1: Implement did:prism "driver" for DIF Universal Resolver (https://uniresolver.io/)

Deliverables:

• Docker container of Universal Resolver "driver", published at DockerHub
• Updated configuration of Universal Resolver project to include the new driver

Expected outcomes:

• did:prism driver successfully added to Universal Resolver and available at https://uniresolver.io/, and for self-hosting:
• Updated documentation available

Milestone 2: Implement did:prism "driver" for DIF Universal Registrar (https://uniregistrar.io/)

Deliverables:

• Docker container of Universal Registrar "driver", published at DockerHub
• Updated configuration of Universal Registrar project to include the new driver

Expected outcomes:

• did:prism driver successfully added to Universal Registrar and available at https://uniregistrar.io/, and for self-hosting:
• Updated documentation available

Milestone 3: Add support for did:prism at Godiddy.com

Deliverables:

• List of supported DID methods at Godiddy.com includes did:prism
• SVG files (or similar format) published of analytics of did:prism as compared to other DID methods

Expected outcomes:

• Very easy way available to resolve, create, and manage did:prism using simple Godiddy.com user interface, or API
• Updated documentation available

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

The following budget is required for the proposed work and resources:

Milestone 1: Implement did:prism "driver" for DIF Universal Resolver (https://uniresolver.io/)

Project management: 20 hours x 250 ADA = 5000 ADA

R&D: 270 hours x 250 ADA = 67500 ADA

DevOps, CI/CD: 40 hours x 250 ADA = 10000 ADA

Total Milestone 1: 82500 ADA

Milestone 2: Implement did:prism "driver" for DIF Universal Registrar (https://uniregistrar.io/)

Project management: 20 hours x 250 ADA = 5000 ADA

R&D: 270 hours x 250 ADA = 67500 ADA

DevOps, CI/CD: 40 hours x 250 ADA = 10000 ADA

Total Milestone 2: 82500 ADA

Milestone 3: Add support for did:prism at Godiddy.com

Project management: 20 hours x 250 ADA = 5000 ADA

R&D: 200 hours x 250 ADA = 50000 ADA

Data Scientist: 40 hours x 250 ADA = 10000 ADA

DevOps, CI/CD: 60 hours x 250 ADA = 15000 ADA

Total Milestone 3: 80000 ADA

Common resources

Basic infrastructure (rent, backoffice, accounting, etc.): 6 months x 3000 ADA = 18000 ADA

Server costs: 6 months x 3000 ADA = 18000 ADA

Total

Total amount requested: 281000 ADA

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

We have calculated the costs based on experiences with previous funding opportunities, including smaller grants from the EU's Next Generation Internet program (NGI), and larger multi-year consortium projects from the Digital Europe program. We believe the costs are justified given the proposed work items, deliverables, and resulting value for the Cardano ecosystem (and beyond). Our entire team is based in Austria.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept