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December 2021

Stephen Curran

Marta Piekarska-Geater

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay

Stephen Curran (Canada) has taken on the role of Chair of the Board of Trustees.
Marta Piekarska-Geater (The UK) stepped down as Chair and remains a Trustee and a member of the Sovrin Technical Governance Board.
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay, (India) has been elected Vice-Chair.

Technical Governance Board

Monitoring the next release of the node (blockchain) code.

Governance Framework

The Sovrin Governance Framework Working Group has been working on
putting together the Sovrin Ecosystem Governance Framework for public
feedback. Last month the discussions focused on structuring the risks
and requirements in context of the policies. The Working Group has
also been engaged in enabling change requests into the Charters for
the various governing bodies in the Foundation.

Compliance & Inclusive Finance

The CIFWG continues its work on the Digital Identity Whitepaper whose focus is sovereign identity principles that work to strengthen and support financial inclusion initiatives and required Know Your Customer (KYC) and FCC controls and operations. To ensure the Rulebook continues to be a dynamic document, in the last month the CIFWG worked on developing the risk assessment in the context of virtual asset providers’ need for risk assessments as well as banks’ need for assessing VASP partners. A new risk assessment resource from Trust Over IP Foundation, Trust over IP Foundation Issues Its First Tools for Managing Risk in Digital Trust Ecosystems - Trust Over IP, is being incorporated as a key tool to build out this section of the Rulebook.

Identity for All Committee

Paused for the holidays. Next meeting in January will be focused on a paper about potential harms for excluded / marginalized communities arising from SSI.

Guardianship

Working on final review of white paper.

Steward Council

Paused for the holidays.

Please check the Sovrin Calendar for revised meeting schedules during the holidays.

Interested in joining any of the Sovrin Working Groups above? Email us at info@sovrin.org.

Sovrin welcomes new steward Bluenumber

Bluenumber is a New York 501c3 and Delaware Public Benefit Corp offering digital identity. Bluenumber lets individuals create wealth from their data and ensure consent so businesses and other organizations may use data individuals create. Bluenumber is a standardized, secure, open infrastructure for service providers and verified users to engage transparently. The Bluenumber platform offers free, standard, shareable digital identity to networks of farmers, workers and companies in Japan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, India and the US. Bluenumber focuses on the Global South and aims to provide SSI as a basic need for people who do not enjoy the benefits that verifiable identity can offer. Bluenumber is a rights-based organization promoting digital equality and data equity.

Dr. Puvan J. Selvanathan, founder and CEO of Bluenumber:
“SSI must be the basis of any society that respects individual rights, counts on willing participation in functioning democracy and values identity and data rights at the core of economic growth. We hope our contribution to the Sovrin community helps this happen.”

Stephen Curran, Chair of Sovrin Foundation’s Board of Trustees:
“Sovrin is excited to enhance it’s vibrant and growing SSI ecosystem in the Global South. We welcome Bluenumber, an organization moving digital ID and data exchange into domains such as agriculture, as a new Steward.”

To see a complete list of Sovrin Foundation Stewards please visit https://sovrin.org/stewards/.

If you missed our Sovrin Community Call with Stephen Curran on December 1st, check the recording here!

Thanks to our community members for joining from all corners of the globe!

00:04:15 Objections to the W3C DID Specification
00:15:47 The "did-:indy" DID Method Specification
00:25:26 AnonCreds and the W3C VC Specification
00:41:42 An update on the Indy-Node Upgrade Project

Community Call with Board of Trustees

Wednesday, January 5th | 5pm UTC

Sovrin held a Use Case Competition in April 2021, which received 28 submissions from 12 countries worldwide. 5 ideas from Mexico, The U.S. Cameroon, The U.K. and South Africa were selected for the finals. The jury concluded that none of the submissions qualified to be turned into live projects without further assistance. Sovrin Foundation as part of SSI advocacy committed to help interested participants further develop their ideas.

In this community call, Sovrin Trustees Darrell O'Donnell and Sankarshan Mukhopadyhay engage with participants on the topic of their use cases.

Register here for a free ticket

Behind the Sovrin Foundation is an infrastructure designed to enable true digital self-sovereign identity (SSI). In accordance with the decentralized nature of blockchain technology, Sovrin infrastructure is open source and receives contributions from people around the world. A first step to working with the Sovrin community is to become a member by visiting our website.

Sovrin calendar

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