Please describe your proposed solution.

SSI Applications

Self-Sovereign Identity Applications, are digital solutions that employ the concept of Self-Sovereign Identity. This concept gives individuals control over their own personal information and identity data. These applications allow users to manage their digital identities independently, without relying on centralized authorities or intermediaries.

SSI applications can be built using various tools and frameworks, each offering unique features and capabilities. Among the most popular are the Hyperledger Aries and Veramo frameworks.

Hyperledger Aries is a shared, reusable, and interoperable toolkit, designed to develop solutions focused on creating, transmitting, and storing verifiable digital credentials. It serves as an infrastructure for blockchain-rooted, peer-to-peer interactions. This framework includes a shared cryptographic wallet for blockchain clients and a communication protocol for allowing off-ledger interactions between those clients.

Veramo is an extensible agent framework for SSI that enables developers to build solutions interacting with different identity networks such as Ethereum, DIDComm, among others. It offers a highly modular and customizable platform for managing decentralized identities (DIDs), creating verifiable credentials, and establishing secure communication channels.

Why are these frameworks valuable for SSI Applications?

1. Simplified Development: These frameworks simplify the process of building SSI applications by providing the necessary tools and functionalities out-of-the-box, so developers can focus on building unique features rather than building the basic SSI functions from scratch.
2. Interoperability: Both Aries and Veramo are designed with interoperability in mind. They can interact with multiple identity networks and blockchains, making them versatile tools for building SSI applications.
3. Security: These frameworks are built with secure protocols to ensure that personal information and identity data remain safe. They offer mechanisms like encryption, secure messaging, and digital signatures to maintain the integrity and privacy of data.
4. Community and Support: These frameworks are backed by strong communities of developers and supporters, providing resources for learning and troubleshooting, as well as continuous updates and improvements.

Solution: Adding DID Method Prism

In addition to existing DID methods, it is possible to integrate Prism, a decentralized identity solution developed for the Cardano blockchain. This enhances the diversity and capabilities of the SSI application and extends interoperability to the Cardano network.

Prism is a self-sovereign identity protocol that leverages Cardano's decentralized infrastructure to provide individuals and businesses with a reliable, secure, and privacy-preserving way of managing and sharing identity data. By adding Prism as a DID method to your SSI application, you unlock the power of the Cardano blockchain, including its high assurance smart contract capability, and its sustainability and scalability features.

The integration of Prism thus not only broadens the range of identities the SSI application can manage but also taps into the unique strengths of the Cardano ecosystem. This enables the creation of even more robust, secure, and user-centric identity solutions. It's also a future-proofing strategy, as Cardano is among the rapidly emerging blockchain platforms with growing adoption.

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

Our solution directly addresses the challenge by facilitating business coordination and stakeholder engagement in parallel with technology implementation. By integrating Atala PRISM into popular SSI SDKs, we are making the technology more accessible and user-friendly, promoting its mass adoption. This will significantly benefit the Cardano ecosystem by increasing the usage and value of Atala PRISM, and by extension, Cardano. For reference @veramo/core has 6500 daily installs

similarly @aries/core has 2100 daily installs

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

Success will be measured by the number of applications that adopt our integrated solution, the number of transactions performed using the integrated Atala PRISM, and the feedback received from the developer community. Here is a list of detailed metrics we can measure:

• github repositories that leverage did:prism in their web5 application code
• number of did prism that have dwn service endpoints
• number of dwn messages exchanged between prism dids

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

We plan to share our results through blog posts, community meetings, and open-source code repositories. We will deliver 2 plugins that will be able to be configured in an Aries Agent and a Veramo Agent. We will also provide a sample application. We will also provide regular updates to the Cardano community through forums and social media like our Youtube channel and Linkedin posts.

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

The RootsID team has been delivering Open Source building blocks for the Self-Sovereign Identity ecosystem in Cardano. We have been funded in several Catalyst projects since Fund 6. Our funded proposal are listed in our web page and also in lidonation, where you can find that we have delivered successfully and on time 18 out of 19 funded proposals. Proposal links, reports, and final videos can be found in those links.

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, the Trust over IP foundation, and the KERI community.

We’ve been providing technical services and consultancy on Decentralized Identity to several companies and organizations including:

• IOG
• Cardano Foundation
• GLEIF

What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

Our main goals are to integrate Atala PRISM DID method into popular SSI SDKs. We propose to implement prism did methods packages to be compatible with @aries-framework/core and @veramo/core.

We have previously build integration for both frameworks and have close connections with the code developer teams for both projects. Here is our Anoncreds implementation for AFJ and here is our Veramo did peer plugin.

We are active in both community meetings and can leverage those opportunities to present and share our on going work and ask for feedback.

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.

Milestone 1 - 1.5 months:

• Implement Create, Read, Update, Deactivate methods for DID Prism on Veramo (3 weeks @ 40 hrs/wk )
• Test and integrate did method in a Veramo sample agent (2 weeks @ 40 hrs/wk )
• Promote new DID method in the community calls and support first testers. (5 weeks @ 5 hrs/wk )

Milestone 2 - 1.5 months:

• Implement Create, Read, Update, Deactivate methods for DID Prism on Aries Framework Javascript(AFJ) (3 weeks @ 40 hrs/wk )
• Test and integrate did method in a AFJ sample agent (2 weeks @ 40 hrs/wk )
• Promote new DID method in the community calls and support first testers. (5 weeks @ 5 hrs/wk )

Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

Milestone 1:

• An npm package that is compatible with @veramo/core.
• A sample Veramo agent that is configured to use did:prism

Milestone 2:

• An npm package that is compatible with @aries-framework/core.
• A sample AFJ agent that is configured to use did:prism

Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Budget is mostly composed of development hours at a ratio of $100/hr (aprox ₳400/hr).

Based on the activities defined above the requested breakdown budget is:

Milestone 1:

Development and testing (5 weeks x 40 hrs/week x ₳400/hr) = ₳80,000 ~ $20,000

Promotion and Community engagement (5 weeks x 5 hrs/week x ₳400/hr) = ₳10,000 ~ $2,500

Milestone 2:

Development and testing (5 weeks x 40 hrs/week x ₳400/hr) = ₳80,000 ~ $20,000

Promotion and Community engagement(5 weeks x 5 hrs/week x ₳400/hr) = ₳10,000 ~ $2,500

Development and Testing (₳160,000 ~ 400hrs total) :

This includes the implementation of Atala PRISM DID method into the 2 sdks. It also includes the testing and the integration for each agent.

Documentation and Promotion (₳20,000 ~ 50 hrs): This covers the costs associated with promoting our solution within the Veramo, Aries communities. It also includes the cost to write the documentation about the sample apps that can be shown during the calls.

Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

This project will be delivered by:

Rodolfo Miranda is a co-founder of RootsID and contributor on several of our projects, including RootsWallet.

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 became an enthusiast of Self Sovereign Identity. He’s an active contributor in the Aries, DIDComm, KERI and Anoncreds Working Groups.

He’s also involved in the Cardano Community, participating as a veteran Proposal Advisor, member of the LATAM Cardano Community, and the Cardano Community SSI Alliance.

LinkedIn

Lance Byrd is a co-founder of RootsID, a group of decentralized identity specialists building open source software for digital identity. Several of their projects have been funded by Catalyst. He is primarly focused on RootsWallet, the end-user identity wallet.

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 completed the first cohort of the Atala Prism Pioneer program and is now part of the Atala Prism Astros program.

Linkedin

Alex Andrei is an experienced open source developer who has a passion for architecting decentralized data solutions. With vast knowledge and expertise in data, Alex is able to create, secure, and scale systems that have the most demanding needs . He’s currently working on the open source identity wallet, RootsWallet. He’s actively participating on standards at Hyperledger, DIF and IETF.

Linkedin

Alex will be leading the project counting with Rodolfo and Lace as supporting developers of KERI technology. We are also including two extra developers currently working for RootsID that will help with the efforts of UI design and DecOps.

Since we are participating in 8 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.

How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

The cost of the project is justified by the significant benefits it will bring to the Cardano ecosystem. By simplifying the onboarding process for applications to the Atala PRISM Ecosystem, we will promote the mass adoption of blockchain technology and add value to the Cardano ecosystem.