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2025-05-28 GATF Meeting Notes - Americas (NAEU)

2025-05-28 GATF Meeting Notes - Americas (NAEU)

Owned by Neil Thomson
Last updated: Jun 11, 2025

This TF schedules meetings as needed. Each meeting will be announced on the GSWG mailing list and the #governance-architecture-tf Slack channel.

The meetings (and Zoom links) are available on the ToIP meeting calendar:
LFX Meetings

Zoom Meeting Links / Recordings

Video and Transcript: Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing

Meeting starts 03:14 in when the anti-trust statement is read.

 

Attendees

@John Phillips - cannot attend

@Neil Thomson

@Drummond Reed

Mikka Elfatih

 

 

 

Agenda Items and Notes (including all relevant links)

Time

Agenda Item

Lead

Notes

3 min

  • Start recording

  • Welcome & antitrust notice

  • New member introductions

  • Agenda review

Chairs

  • Antitrust Policy Notice: Attendees are reminded to adhere to the meeting agenda and not participate in activities prohibited under antitrust and competition laws. Only members of ToIP who have signed the necessary agreements are permitted to participate in this activity beyond an observer role.

  •  

2 min

Review of previous action items

Chairs

 

 

Topic #1

 

 

 

Topic #2

 

 

 

Topic #3

 

 

 

Topic #4

 

 

5 mins

  • Review decisions/action items

  • Planning for next meeting 

Chairs

 

Summary of meeting:

Summary of meeting generated by ChatGPT 4 from the transcript, chat messages and Neil Thomson’s notes.

1. Attendees

  • Neil Thomson (QueryVision)

  • Drummond Reed

  • Makki Elfatih (Hkdolts)

2. Key Discussion Highlights

A. GATF Deliverables and Structure

  • Three new Confluence pages were created by John Phillips to outline draft deliverables:

    • Government Conformance Lifecycle

    • Government Requirements for Trust Registry

    • Government and Cross-Ecosystem Trust.

  • These deliverables aim to provide a comprehensive governance model addressing trust among independent ecosystems and their key actors: Issuers, Verifiers, and Holders.

B. Inclusion of Holders in Governance Scope

  • Neil emphasized the need to explicitly define the role of Holders within the governance framework, alongside Issuers and Verifiers. This includes how Holders apply for credentials and prove legitimacy to Verifiers.

  • Drummond supported this, stressing the importance of Holder Binding and Liveness Detection as crucial aspects of governance, especially to prevent impersonation, theft, or resale of credentials.

  • Wallet certification emerged as a necessary mechanism to ensure trust in the digital wallet’s ability to perform secure presentation of VCs.

C. Trust Registry Query Protocol (TRQP) and Abstraction Layer

  • Drummond explained how TRQP provides an abstraction layer to interact with Trust Registries without mandating their internal structure. If a registry can’t natively respond to TRQP queries, a bridge component handles translation.

D. High Assurance Verifiable Identifiers (HAVIDs)

  • Neil raised concerns about cross-ecosystem incompatibilities in how HAVIDs (High Assurance Verifiable Identifiers) are implemented and (e.g., different assurance mechanisms in Ecosystem A vs B).

  • Suggested cross-ecosystem governance audits and/or third-party certification as a scalable solution rather than each ecosystem “technically” verifying the other’s identifiers and credentials independently.

E. Logical Models for Governance

  • Both Neil and Drummond emphasized the need for logical models to represent schema and data structures across implementations, akin to presentation and exchange schemas used in digital wallets and travel profiles.

  • Drummond described authority statements using a three-part structure: Authority, Assertion, and Entity, forming the basis for TRQL (Trust Registry Query Language), a new spec in development.

3. Issues Raised and Proposed Solutions

Issue

Proposed Solution

Issue

Proposed Solution

Lack of governance focus on Holders

Extend conformance/governance requirements to include Holders, not just Issuers and Verifiers

Credential misuse (stolen/sold wallets)

Require Wallet Certification and support for Holder Binding/Liveness Detection

Cross-ecosystem VC and HAVID acceptance

Implement governance-level mutual audits rather than technical verification for each use

Heterogeneous trust registry systems

Use TRQP bridges to translate and interoperate registry queries

Legacy system incompatibility (e.g., travel/hospitality backends)

Introduce logical presentation/exchange schemas and bridging layers

4. Agreements Reached

  • Holder functionality and governance must be explicitly defined in GATF documents.

  • Wallet certification is increasingly unavoidable and essential to trust in holder-bound credentials.

  • Governance must include interoperability protocols (like TRQP) and logical schema views to enable ecosystem interoperability.

  • Future deliverables will follow the model of the ToIP Issuer Requirements Guide, with documents on Verifiers, Holders, and interaction patterns between all entities.

5. Next Steps

  1. Update the GATF Confluence Wiki to reflect the inclusion of Holder governance and wallet certification concerns.

  2. Draft a Verifier Requirements Document to complement the existing Issuer Requirements Guide.

  3. Define and document the Trust Registry governance requirements, including record formats and exchange semantics.

  4. Continue work on TRQL (Trust Registry Query Language) to support standardized assertion semantics.

  5. Prepare logical models (presentation/exchange schemas) for consistent interpretation of ecosystem data and governance records.

  6. Capture and summarize discussion notes (Neil to post on the Confluence pages following the meeting).

References

  1. GATF Confluence Wiki: Governance Architecture Task Force

  2. ToIP Issuer Requirements Guide V0.01

  3. TRQL Specification Page

Chat notes

00:06:48 Neil Thomson (QueryVision): GATF Deliverable - Government and Cross-Ecosystem Trust
00:33:43 Drummond Reed: TRQL — Trust Registry Query Language