DENVER–CULedger said it has become a founding member of the Trust over IP (ToIP) Foundation as the representative for credit unions.
CULedger, a CUSO that has been working to create a platform of digital exchange for financial cooperatives globally, including the creation of a global self-sovereign decentralized identity, MemberPass, said it will be collaborating with other leading organizations globally to define a digital trust infrastructure that includes both technical and policy interoperability of the MemberPass decentralized identity credentials beyond its current network.
According to CULedger, the purpose of the Trust over IP Foundation is to define a complete architecture for Internet-scale of digital trust that combines cryptographic trust at the machine level and human trust at the business, legal and social layers. The Foundation will use the same W3C (Worldwide Web Consortium, www.w3.org) Verifiable Credentials and Decentralized Identities (DID) standards, as used by MemberPass, to leverage interoperable credentials, as organizations and other verticals around the world are catching on quickly to these new digital identity approaches, according to the CUSO.
A Need to Operate Together
“The Foundation’s approach is technology agnostic and recognizes that there will be other networks in play,” CULedger said. “All of these networks will need to operate with one another. By participating in the ToIP Foundation, credit union members can begin using passwordless authentication and intelligence authorization for faster, easier, safer and more privacy-respecting digital experiences anywhere.”
The Linux Foundation announced it will host the Trust over IP (ToIP) Foundation as an independent project to enable trustworthy exchange and verification of data between any two parties on the Internet. The ToIP Foundation will provide a robust, common standard that gives people and businesses the confidence that data is coming from a trusted source, allowing them to connect, interact and innovate at a speed and scale not possible today, according to the Linux Foundation.
Joining CULedger as founding steering members are Accenture, BrightHive, Cloudocracy, Continuum Loop, Dhiway, esatus, Evernym, Finicity, Futurewei Technologies, IBM Security, IdRamp, Lumedic, Mastercard, MITRE, the Province of British Columbia and SICPA. Contributing members include DIDx, GLEIF, The Human Colossus Foundation, iRespond, kiva.org, Marist College, Northern Block, R3, Secours.io, TNO and University of Arkansas, according to the organization.
The ‘Promise’
"The ToIP Foundation has the promise to provide the digital trust layer that was missing in the original design of the Internet and to trigger a new era of human possibility," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation. "The combination of open standards and protocols, pan-industry collaboration and our neutral governance structure will support this new category of digital identity and verifiable data exchange."
The Linux Foundation said its open governance model enables the ToIP Foundation to advance a combination of technology and governance standards for digital trust in a neutral forum that supports pan-industry collaboration.
“An open governance model that can be integrated into the development of the standards for digital trust is essential where the business, legal and social guidelines for technology adoption impacts human trust and behavior,” the Linux Foundation said.
Working Groups
The ToIP Foundation will initially host four Working Groups. The Technical Stack Working Group and the Governance Stack Working Group will focus on building out and hardening the Technical and Governance halves of the ToIP stack, respectively. The Utility Foundry Working Group and the Ecosystem Foundry Working Group will serve as communities of practice for projects that wish to collaborate on the development of ToIP utility networks or entire ToIP digital trust ecosystems.