2022-04-20 All Members Meeting Notes

Agenda 

• Recording

Link

• Presentation (Google Slides)
   

Notes

Judith Fleenor introduced the meeting with the Anti Trust rules governing our ToIP Foundation and then walked the members through the agenda and she shared the updates on our new members. Judith announced the three presenters, Martin Wainstein, Nancy Norris and Kyle Robinson and shared the up-coming conferences and events, including IIW, HXWG has a speaker series–How Might meeting is a Working Group Update Format, and the European Identity Conference in Germany. She continued that our next monthly meeting in May is a Working Group meeting update. Additional announcements were made regarding the AGENCY-Complex harms reduction through co-design of socio-techinial systems in FinTech on May 19th in HXWG.

Martin Wainstein, Executive Director of the Open Earth Foundation, introduced himself and shared insight into the work he and their organization is currently doing at the intersection of emerging digital technologies with a big focus on distributed ledger technology and AI. They focus on digital infrastructure and we they're focused on planetary scale projects so using systems thinking to understand what are key leverage points that they need to work on, in order to have multi-scale and multi-domain timeframes for more resilient environmental systems for earth and that takes us, among other things, to the area of climate accounting and managing super national policies, like the Paris Agreement. It's throw this process of climate accounting and trying to bridge certain gaps that we fall into the important topic of digital identity and digital trust. Consequently, the OEF has been collaborating with British Columbia for the past few years and in the last HyperLedger Global forum, they presented alongside BC and they're now very actively working together on a pilot for Open Climate Network and the Digital Trust Marketplace.

Martin Wainstein shared the work they've been collaboration on specifically is the Open Climate Platform Project that they started researching and working on four years ago and the specific pilot that they're doing with BC. He went on to share that the OCP is set to bridge gaps when it comes to climate accounting, accountability and essentially climate trust and transparency. The Paris Climate Agreement is a key policy document that connects all countries and a defined target to stay below 1.5 degree warming relative to pre industrial area. He shared a diagram in his slide that illustrates the records for climate and the emissions associated with them and financial actions associated with them. The idea is to solve for the issue that most of our climate data management system is fundamentally fragmented. A digital integrated global climate accounting system allows for framing the climate aspects of the 'Digital' Trust Marketplace within a holistic framework is needed to ensure positive network effects, feedback loops and a win-win scenario across all stakeholders. Hosting multiple climate accounting mechanisms connect through shared protocols, allows contractual automation in the link between finance and climate value flow based on agreed physical parameter of the Earth system. The illustration breaks down the influence from climate finances, climate assets, climate action and climate agreements. Martin went on to shared the illustration that depict the Designing Infrastructure for a Climate Internet with a key focus on the Nested Climate Accounting in a Spactial Web. Their goal is to capture the collective climate efforts, integrating public and private entities while preventing double counting. This funnels from the top down with International global transparent accounting and narrow to the respective countries, then states, accounting for compliance and verification across each level. One of the things they're currently working on is integrating climate accounting from non-state actors to support an independent exercise for the Paris Agreement Global Stocktake and referenced a resource to learn more here (wiki.climatedata.network/). The work they're doing with BC is most relevant in the mining sector and the supply chain and data trust within that supply chain and the development of GHG Profiles for mining companies using verifiable credentials. Another area they're focused on is regarding applying hyperledger's decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials to climate action. Another key aspect specific to the mechanics of the process are around transparency and shared an illustration that depict the capability within their projects. They need ToIP as they try to create a data source or provider because we bring a community to help define this technical solution architecture. Their current pilot demonstrates the mapping and a system diagram intends to clarify scope and further outline contemporary approaches for how credentials under the ToIP specifications can be applied to tested climate accounting. The diagram follows the mechanism by while Open Climate has been using the semantics on the hyperspace transfer protocol. The first step is the climate data validation and governance issuer information. The second and third steps would be corporation self issuer or an independent validator; ultimately they're working to a triple verification process.  

Kyle Robinson introduced himself and Nancy Norris and their Mines Digital Trust Carbon Accounting Use Case presentation. Nancy Norris introduced herself as the Director of Strategic Policy at VCS Ministry of Energy Low Carbon Innovation. She started with an introduction into how they got involved in this collaboration. They started with a proof of concept, then started a pilot and created a scaling strategy for the digital ecosystem and expansion. Part of their initial step was creating an POC enterprise wallet, in addition to the POC. They also presented a Use Case at COP26 in collaboration with Copper Mountain Mining Corporation, Open Earth Foundation and BC Government. They're committed to an Open Source approach and interoperability are both essential to the mission of their efforts. They're working with a number of open organizations like Linux Foundation and ToIP. Nancy shared a video that illustrates how BC Mines can share their data with companies  for exploration and provide significant advantages in terms of branding metals and minerals to global investors. The demonstration shows how data can scale in a global accounting platform, via Hyperledger Aries. 

Kyle Robinson shared that the work that was illustrated in phase one of the demo is the predecessor of phase two with a tool called Traction that's an API to connect an existing system with the new API can be connected to a wallet for issuing, holding and verifying by a singular business line integration. In addition to the API, they're build out a showcase and traction code (https://github.com/bcgov/traction). He went on to share the ToIP Layer model and provided an use case graphic that illustrates what they need to have a complete production use case. It align on the Governance Stack: Layer 1 with Utility Governance Framework, Layer 2 with Agent/Wallet Governance Framework, Layer 3 with Credentials Governance Frameworks and Layer 4 with an Ecosystem Governance Framework. He shared that on the Technology Stack, Layer 1 aligns with Public Utilities, Layer 2 with Peer-to-Peer Communication, Layer 3 with Data Exchange Protocols and Layer 4 with Application Ecosystems. He went on in detail regarding the carbon accounting pilot that is underway that depict the use case in a workflow. It illustrates an indicator for the governance framework that's applied from an issuer, a verifier and a holder perspectives throughout the entire lifecycle of the process. 

Drummond Reed asked if the governance frameworks they're creating will be published and Kyle Robinson confirmed that they will be published and right now they're using markdown and GitHub to track the progress and digital trust that's currently in play within the BC Government. Wenjing Chu agreed the presentation was comprehensive and relatable for the architecture and implementation of the stack. He asked about the accountability factors into play. How are these implemented and how are they tracked in real time. Kyle Robinson mentioned that getting documentation available is step one for this who process and GitHub is the primary place to store the documentation currently and in terms accountability, that needs to be written into the documentation as reference and protocol to follow. Martin mentioned the idea of a Hackathon in the future to collaborate on to continue helping to drive development and progress within the ecosystem.