The purpose of this list is to help ToIP Ecosystem Solution Providers prioritize questions to ask themselves within their decisioning process of selecting a Utility.
Categories | Question |
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1. Business Model / Sustainability |
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2. Product Governance |
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3. Legal Governance |
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6 things you should know about blockchain utilities when pursuing a decentralized identity strategy
As part of it's mission to architect what is needed for Internet-scale digital trust, the Trust over IP (ToIP) Foundation has published a duel-architecture design that places emphasis on governance, but also the need for publicly available utilities to store pertinent information relating to the Issuers of Verified Credentials and the structures of these credentials. To achieve portable digital identities and equip people and organizations with trusted and secured credentials, it's important to consider the base layer of the stack. See below:
Within the ToIP's Utility Foundry working group, we've been working alongside the community of utility project conveners to document their missions and requirements when forming their respective utility layers. Based on the initial research, here are 6 things you should know about utilities when pursuing a decentralize identity strategy for your business and respective ecosystems.
1. How much am I willing to pay to use a utility?
- Compare transactions types and fees (Sovrin example)
- Depending on ecosystem use case, you may need lots of transactions
2. Should I consider convening in the creation of my own utility?
- What are complexities (managing consortium, legal entity formation)
- Costs
- Why private networks aren't better than databases
3. Do I need to run a node to use a utility?
- Benefits of running a node
- Example of Sovrin stewards
- Costs of running a node
4. How can I evaluate existing utility options?
- Side revenue-generating services
- Interoperability - Avoiding ledger-lock
- We documented utilities list: https://github.com/trustoverip/utility-foundry-wg/blob/master/UTILITY_LIST.md
5. Do I need to consider data privacy laws (e.g., GDPR) in my decisioning?
- Write about IDunion here and the rise of localized networks such as CanaCred.
6. Can I test a utility before committing to one?
- Most established utilities have test networks that are free to use for testing and use case proofing
- Write about Indicio and Sovrin here.