Interoperability as growth driver

INTRODUCTION

Although Decentralized Identity is a novel technology, it has been around for years and, fortunately, many communities agreed that standardization and interoperability is the path to go. W3C DID Working Group and DIF foundation are making great efforts in that direction and hence many solutions with real use cases were developed with those concepts in mind.

For Atala PRISM and Cardano to success in mass-adoption as a DID solution, it's necessary that it can be integrated with existing frameworks that are currently used in real DID solutions. Two examples of that are Hyperledger Aries framework as used by Sovrin Foundation, and DIF Sidetree as used for ION in Bitcoin blockchain.

We believe that if Cardano plugins are available for most common frameworks, providers and developers of DID solutions will start considering Cardano ledger as a valid and excellent option. In other words, being "ready to use" plus the advantages of Cardano over other blockchain will boost adoption in the near and long term.

PROJECT DETAILS

In concrete, our proposal consists in facilitating the foundational building blocks as a reference to the broad DID community so they can adapt their solutions to work with Cardano with minimum effort.

We divided this work in two parts:

• Part 1: Standardization and documentation
• Part 2: Cardano plugins development

PART 1: STANDARDIZATION AND DOCUMENTATION:

The purpose of this initial phase is to normalize and document how Decentralized Identity can be used in Cardano so anyone interested could clearly understand how can be implemented. It should be also designed to be read by people from outside of Cardano community that need to interpret how they can adapt their solutions to Cardano Blockchain. Document style will be similar as the one used in Cardano Developer Portal with a hope that can be included there.

If Atala PRISM implementation code is opensourced in time, we will leverage that information and develop a guide explaining how DID are stored and retrieved from Cardano blockchain.

If Atala PRISM code is not opensourced in time, we will develop a guide explaining several options on how to store and retrieve DID from Cardano blockchain.

The scope of the document will include, but not limited to, the following topics:

• DID syntax conventions (i.e. did:ada:mainnet:{identifier})
• How DIDs should be stored, retrieved, updated, and deactivated
• Where DID Documents should be stored
• DID Document conformance (i.e. W3C Decentralized Identifiers v1.0, DIDComm messaging)
• Links to useful tools, guides and examples

Deliverable: github or webpage with hosted document

Estimated duration: 2 weeks

PART 2: CARDANO PLUGINS DEVELOPMENT

The goal of this phase is to get involved with existing solutions in the DID ecosystems and contribute to integrate them into Cardano blockchain. Those activities are the main driver to get worldwide mass adoption as they will facilitate the broad community outside Cardano to include our ledger in their solutions.

We called those integrations as plugins, not necessarily in the strict sense, but to be seen as essential piece of software or module that can be easily included in existing frameworks. By that means, the framework will adopt Cardano as the ledger part of the solution.

Obviously, the scope of building plugins in general is as broad as we can imagine, so hence, for the purpose of this proposal we will just focus in three cases, leaving other cases to next funding rounds and the community.

Specifically, we will develop plugins for:

1. DIF Universal Resolver (https://github.com/decentralized-identity/universal-resolver)
2. Hyperledger Aries from Linux Foundation (https://github.com/hyperledger/aries)
3. DIF Sidetree reference implementation (https://github.com/decentralized-identity/sidetree)

The first one is the development of a driver following DIF Universal Resolver specifications that will allow to resolve DID stored in Cardano blockchain.

Deliverable: github with open-source code

Estimated duration: 2 weeks

The second one corresponds to the development of code needed to adapt Hyperledger Aries framework to interact with Cardano ledger. We will focus on Aries Cloudagent Python (aca-py) and Aries Framework Javascript. We will provide functional sample code that the community would clone, build and execute.

Deliverable: github with open-source code

Estimated duration: 1 month

For the last one, we'll develop a Cardano Plugin and instaniated version of Sidetree reference implementation that communicate with Cardano desentralized ledger, in a similar way that ION did it for Bitcoin. The code will also include a README.md that explain how to compile and execute in a real environment.

Deliverable: github with open-source code

Estimated duration: 1 month

BUDGET BREAKDOWN

• STANDARDIZATION AND DOCUMENTATION: USD 3.500
• UNIVERSAL RESOLVER DRIVER:                      USD 3.500
• HYPERLEDGER ARIES PLUGIN:                        USD 15.000
• DIF SIDETREE PLUGIN:                                     USD 15.000

TOTAL: USD 37.000

PROJECT SCHEDULE

• STANDARDIZATION AND DOCUMENTATION: 2 weeks
• UNIVERSAL RESOLVER DRIVER: 2 weeks
• HYPERLEDGER ARIES PLUGIN: 1 month
• DIF SIDETREE PLUGIN: 1 month

TOTAL DURATION: 3 MONTHS

PROJECT ORGANIZATION

The project implementation will follow Agile management based on Jira Cloud tools. Jira users can be created for follow up and auditability. Additionally, a bi-weekly report will be publish with project progress, mayor milestones and risk assessment.

There are four deliverables that constitute the main metric of progress and success:

1. Part 1 Documentation
2. Part 2a Universal Resolver driver
3. Part 2b Hyperledger Aries plugin
4. Part 2c DIF Sidetree plugin

As a commitment to the transparency of the allocated funds, we expect payments based on above deliverables without the need of advance payments.

THE TEAM

This proposal was elaborated by Rodolfo Miranda. His Linkedin profile can be find at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodolfomiranda/

His background includes a MS EE degree at Stanford University and more than 25 years of successful work experience in both large multinational companies and owned startup projects. His main activities involve architecting, developing, and implementing large scale software solutions for the Telecommunication Industry. He leads multi-disciplinary and multinational teams in the Caribbean and Latin America.

More than 40 years of self-taught programming with advance knowledge on many coding languages. Lately, he was engaged in blockchain technologies with emphasis in Cardano blockchain.

For this personal project he will allocate sufficient time resources to cope with the project. An additional developer will be included to the project to help developing in the existing DID frameworks. The final selection of the developer will be made among already known developers from Latin America that were part of other projects. Note that the developer does not require a full understanding of Cardano blockchain, but a great knowledge of Javascript and Python languages and ability to understand specifications and protocols.

ADITIONAL IMPORTANT NOTE

We understand that when ATALA PRISM is delivered it might include additional code or SDK that overlap with some of the deliverables planned in this proposal. In that case we won't copy and use that code as part of our deliverables. Instead, that part of that project can be disregarded. We've broken down the budget and timeframes so each individual part of the project can be eliminated from payments and total duration.