Today the Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee approved identity protocol Indy to graduate from incubation to active status. Most of Hyperledger’s twelve projects are in incubation apart from the Fabric, Iroha and Sawtooth blockchain protocols.
Factors considered to become an active project include “code quality, security best practices, open source governance, and a diverse pool of contributors”.
Hyperledger Indy is the decentralized identity solution that aims to put the control of user data back in the hands of individuals, thereby safeguarding data from privacy breaches and hacking.
Private data is not stored on the Hyperledger Indy ledger. Instead, it uses blockchain to enable third parties to verify that private credentials are issued by trusted organizations. The code was contributed to Hyperledger by startup Evernym and the Indy technology underpins the public Sovrin network.
Sovrin’s first partner was CULedger, the credit union service organization which is also backed by numerous credit unions. CULeger’s MyCUID enables members to enjoy more secure alternatives to passwords such as voice and fingerprint login.
IBM is a big fan of Sovrin and is working on a Job-Creds employee credentialing research project with Sovrin, Workday and ATB Financial. And Canada’s British Columbia Government launched the Verifiable Organizations Network (VON) which enables data to be used for registrations, permits and licenses. Other “stewards” of the Sovrin network include Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, NEC and Swisscom.
Just three weeks ago Sovrin announced that the platform was open for any organization to begin issuing credentials.
