KERI bridge for Cardano

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

RootsID will work closely with the team behind KERI to develop the first implementation of a witness for key event logs, making Cardano a secondary root of trust.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

RootsID is a group of expert Cardano/Catalyst/Atala Prism/Aries SSI developers building an open source identity ecosystem on Cardano. We have been engaging with KERI working groups and are excited to research how to bring these two innovative communities and ecosystems together.

[GENERAL] Requested funds in USD.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Key Event Receipt Infrastructure (KERI) is the first truly fully decentralized identity system. Based on a log of self-certifying cryptographic key events it produces a decentralized secure root-of-trust that doesn't need a ledger, or, moreover, is ledger-portable which means that its identifiers are not locked to any given blockchain and may switch as needed. In other words KERI identifiers are truly portable.

For that reason it is considered a breakthrough technology that is being adopted in major projects such as Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), that works with partners to issue millions of unique identification to legal entities participating in financial transactions around the globe. 

One of KERI’s primary innovations is that parties other than the controller of the identifier can also sign the events as Witnesses, just as someone would witness a person’s physical signature on a paper document (as it’s often legally required for high value documents like wills and mortgages).

A blockchain is the perfect technology to act as a witness providing an independent root of trust besides the controller. This feature is highly appreciated and the first to implement it will become a de facto trustee to anyone implementing KERI.

This project is about implementing the bridge between KERI event logs and Cardano to act as a Witness on each transaction. The activities required two main activities:

1. understand the technology (withpaper)
2. familiarize the available implementations
3. develop a Proof of Concept bridge component into Cardano blockchain. The code will be Open Source

RootsID team is participating in the KERI working group that meets every Tuesday. We have mentioned the possibility of this project and the working team offered its commitment to provide support in that endeavor.

More information about KERI at https://keri.one

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

As indicated by this article from the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), KERI could become the foundation of massive interoperability and portability at the infrastructure layer (the blockchain). In other worlds, the technology provides a way to move identifiers from one chain to another with cryptographic guarantee. 

KERI bridges and backers, as this project is about, is enabling the portability of Identifiers between blockchains with a guarantee of ownership (private public keys and their updates events). And since data written in a blockchain is guaranteed by cryptographic signatures by their owners, KERI is also allowing the portability of trusted data. 

That portability is a big step for cross-chain collaboration and the reason why we think is important for this Challenge goal.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

KERI is a complex cryptographic protocol and ecosystem of service roles. Just the whitepaper lasts 140 pages. Our main concerns and risk is tackling that complexity, even though our work may not require the full understanding of the protocol. Our mitigation plan, and confidence, comes from our regular participation in the KERI working group that meets every Tuesday. That meeting is led by the creator of KERI, Sam Smith, Ph.D. who personally offered all the help needed to cope with this task.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Project plan consist of the following activities with its duration:

1. Research Technology: 3 weeks
2. Deploy KERI agent and begin the cycle of prototyping and QA with the KERI working group: 4 weeks
3. Develop PoC: 4 weeks
4. Documentation: 1 week

TOTAL DURATION: 3 months

The high-level scope of each of the four activities above is is composed by:

1. Research: we need to deep dive into KERI. There’s tons of materials and we’ll also use the weekly working group meetings to ask questions and receive guidance.
2. KERI agent: first practical task is to deploy a KERI agent, play and familiarize with it. That’s is the best way to clarify concepts and understand the architecture and process of the Proof of Concept
3. Development: this activity is the development of the KERI/Cardano bridge as a Proof of Concept. We’ll use known libraries to connect to the ledger such as Dandelion and Blockfrost
4. Documentation: we will provide documentation on how to deploy and use the agent as well as the conclusion of the process and future steps.

Deliverables:

• Open Source code on Github repo
• Documentation with final conclusions and next steps

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Budget is mostly composed of researching and development hours at a ratio of $100/hr. Based on the activities defined above the requested breakdown budget is:

• Research Technology: 40 hours = $4.000
• Deploy KERI and play around: 50 hours = $5.000
• Develop Proof-of-Concept: 60 hours = $6.000
• Documentation: 10 hours = $1.000

TOTAL BUDGET: $16.000

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

The RootsID team has been delivering Open Source building blocks for the Self-Sovereign Identity ecosystem in Cardano. They have been funded in several Catalyst projects since Fund 6. All of them were delivered successfully on time or still in development in the planned timeline. Our funded projects are:

• F6: Interoperability as Growth Driver: [DELIVERED] [Github] [final report video]
• F7: Interoperability Within Atala Prism: [DELIVERED] [Github] [final report video]
• F7: Hyperledger-Prism Interoperability: [DELIVERED] [Github] [final report video]
• F7: Open Source Credential Wallet: [DELIVERED] [Github] [final report video]
• F7: WAL-CLI Wallet Tools for developers: [DELIVERED] [Github] [final report video]
• F8: Universal Resolver for did:prism: [IN DEVELOPMENT]
• F8: DIDComm v2 Mediator: [IN DEVELOPMENT]
• F8: RootsWallet - Support for sidetree: [IN DEVELOPMENT]
• F8: KYC Credentials PoC: [IN DEVELOPMENT]
• F8: Cardano SSI standards contributors: [IN DEVELOPMENT] [video]
• F8: RootsWallet beta - Backup/Recovery: [IN DEVELOPMENT]
• F8: WAL-CLI Communication: [IN DEVELOPMENT]

The team is constantly engaged in all Self Sovereign Identity Cardano activities such as Atala Prism Astros, Atala Prism Pioneer Program, Prism+SSI After Town Hall break rooms, and meeting periodically with partners or related Catalyst projects with the aim of collaboration and help adoption and growth of Cardano in the Identity world.

Additionally, the team participates actively in the worldwide SSI community by attending and collaborating to several working groups in the Decentralized Identity Foundation, the Hyperledger foundation, and the Trust over IP foundation.

This project in particular will be developed by Rodolfo Miranda and Lance Byrd:

Rodolfo Miranda: 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. Lately, he was engaged in blockchain technologies and joined Cardano community where he:

• Participate as Community Advisor (from F6) and vCA (from F7), and is involved in many improvement working groups and discussions
• Is part of the Challenge Team for Fund 7 challenge "Grow Latinamerica, Grow Cardano"
• Is part of the Challenge Team for Fun 8 challenge “Self-Sovereign Identity”
• Was part of the first cohort of the Atala Prism Pioneer Program
• Is part of the team that created the LATAM Cardano Community and host a weekly LATAM TownHall

Lance Byrd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/2byrds/

His background includes a BS in Computer Science (UMBC) and MS in Information Assurance (Capitol College) and more than 22 years of software development as a consultant. He has developed massive scale data analytics and visualizations, machine learning analysis pipelines, and worked with University researchers to bring their work to market. He has also built and taught technical certification courses for several different topics in data analysis, big data, and compliance.

He is an expert Cardano/Catalyst/Atala Prism SSI mobile developer. He is one of the founders of RootsID which has been building a Cardano-based open source identity ecosystem including a mobile identity wallet called RootsWallet. He is advised by expert UX designers from IOG, identity experts like Darrell O'Donnel and Tony Rose and is a regular at Trust Over IP, Decentralized Identity Foundation, and Hyperledger foundation meetings.

For this Fund 9, RootsId is presenting the following proposals:

• F9: RootsWallet - iPhone version
• F9: RootsWallet - Aries JS (this one)
• F9: KERI bridge for Cardano
• F9: RootsId Verifiable Credentials
• F9: Discord Social Credential
• F9: RootsWallet - Simplified SSI UX 
• F9: WAL-CLI Issue Credential Protocol
• F9: WAL-API Identity Wallet Service
• F9: Cardano SSI Contributors - Season 2
• F9: ATALA Prism ZKP + Hyperledger Aries (collaboration with Snapbrillia)

Since we are participating in 10 proposals, we carefully planned time allocation for each of us. We defined our individual commitment per week as if all of the proposals are funded including extra activities. Based on that, we defined the allocation per proposal for each of us needed to deliver the proposal in time. Take in account that we design our proposals to have a duration no longer than 12-14 weeks in order to match funding rounds, that means that our pending F8 proposals will be concluded before the F9 execution phase starts. For your reference we add a link to the time allocation spreadsheet that can help you validate that our commitments are feasible.

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

If we get funded there’s a high chance that we return in the next round to improve that project from a Proof of Concept to a system that can be deployed in production. Also we should engage with potential users interested in that capability. We would like to include KERI features in several of our open source projects that have been built for the Cardano community.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

This project is basically a software development project with four clear deliverables that will work as proofs of completion:

• the open source code on the RootsID public GitHub repository
• the documentation

Additionally, this team adopts Agile methodology based on the tools provided by Github. Besides progress reports, the advancement will be tracked by public Github issues, project views (like Kanban board) and commits. Intermediate progress will be reported as Sprint Burndown, a KPI metric that shows the progress in percentage of each development sprint.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Our success have several goals:

• understand this breakthrough technology, since it will open the door for more opportunities in Cardano, while showing the equally impressive Cardano ecosystem to the KERI community
• providing the first bridge for KERI in a blockchain
• attract other projects that are building on KERI to anchor a secondary root of trust in Cardano, and become the preferred and default root of trust for KERI controllers
• make Cardano the principal registry and resolver of KERI identifiers

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This is an entirely new proposal.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

We are grateful to be able to discuss and consider how our identity software might impact our grass roots users and their communities. By giving each individual control over their own cryptographically verifiable digital identity, we hope to empower their ability to choose to be remembered and/or forgotten in nuanced and fulfilling ways that improves every area of their life and community. We would especially like to see improvements in the following ways:

SDG goals:

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

SDG subgoals:

10.7 Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies

16.7 Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels

17.17 Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships

9.b Support domestic technology development, research and innovation in developing countries, including by ensuring a conducive policy environment for, inter alia, industrial diversification and value addition to commodities