Simone Ravaoli: Alright almost there recording is on so now everything that you said will be recorded and available forever so announcements again a reminders Chris please. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: Maybe not at this stage then anyone else. ✪
<chris_kelly_(dif)> I wanted to share that DIF is looking for a Community Manager
<chris_kelly_(dif)> DIF is growing! We are hiring a dedicated community manager: if you want to be a key part of a vibrant and evolving community at DIF and beyond, check out the details and apply here: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2951779049 Please also share this public listing with your network!
Simone Ravaoli: Alright great so let's move to introduction and range reductions. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: When you discover that would like to quickly just say hello please. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: Jump on or we would call on you. ✪
<kerri_lemoie> Thanks @Chris!
Topic: Web3 Onboarding Use Case
Evin: Hey guys how's it going I'm Evan McMullen here from the Disco team super excited to join the conversation I'm here joined with my colleague and co-founder Johnny Howell we've been floating around the edge of the w3c ecosystem for many years but super excited to be here Live In Living Color to join you all today. ✪
<kerri_lemoie> Welcome @Evin & @Jonny!
Simone Ravaoli: Lovely thanks everyone for for the breaking the eyes and looking forward to hear what you guys are up to anyone else to say hello. ✪
Jonny: Yeah so Evan Evan just mentioned me but Johnny work with Evan on Disco product leading co-founder over there and great to do it. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: But if you just don't feel like opening up the mic now there is going to be an opportunity throughout the call to jump in wait please I see someone coming off on video thank you. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: Yeah no you cannot hear you though. ✪
<jan_muehlig> mic tricks needed
Simone Ravaoli: Maybe Dixie playing audio tricks on you. ✪
<kerri_lemoie> Hey folks - I'll keep an eye on the transcriber but if you notice anything getting transcribed badly, feel free to make the substitution like: s/Dixie/Jitsi
Simone Ravaoli: Yeah maybe you want to try to work on that you know happy to just please keep yourself up you know at any point and love to hear from you and welcome anyways yeah. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: At you you put something in the chat regarding you looking for a community manager you want to up in Mike now we ask and share that directly. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: All right no apparently so but please folks look in the chat. ✪
<jan_muehlig> hi together, I am Jan, on behalf of ICoBC, very much looking forward to hear about this topic
<chris_kelly_(dif)> Thanks for the shout out
Simone Ravaoli: If is looking for a community manager that's great opportunity okay okay all right we're through that love to jump into the conversation today we are going to talk about web through him verifiable credentials and and particularly through guess the mines you know eyes and mouths of Johnny and Evan Dave. ✪
<don_presant> Hi all, Don from Canada - CanCred.ca and Learning Agents
Simone Ravaoli: Weaving a strong narrative around verifiable credentials and decentralized identifiers in a way that connects a lot of use cases you know I think when we when we reflect on adoption and the work that we do here you know the option being the ultimate goal we would probably need strategies or just way of articulating the value and I think they're up to something and I don't want to take away any more time from them because I think this is good I would we want to hear from. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: Conversation together so heavy now I will just pass a forward to you and take it away. ✪
<kerri_lemoie> One thing worth noting from a CCG infrastructure perspective. Slide & video sharing can because the recording & transcriber to quit so while this is being investigated, we aren't sharing slides in video while presenting.
Evin: Awesome thank you guys so much for having us today and really excited to work with all of you to make verifiable credentials the awesome standard in practice that they are specs in the hypothetical so I know obviously you know many many of you have been working on this for many years John I have have worked on a variety of implementations for verifiable credentials from Enterprise to education which is what we're thinking about together here today so I'll invite. ✪
Evin: About disco as it will be introduced to the world in early April but we see a really exciting opportunity for verifiable credentials to provide the Firepower from which web 3 in the crypto ecosystem can you know can get its power we're seeing right now that there is a surge of desire to work in the crypto and web three ecosystem and that because there's not a lot of formal education available around. ✪
Evin: See many different you know diverse credentialing issuers many organizations that are providing some of this guidance but very few ways for a user an individual to accrue that expertise proofs of their learning and expertise in a rapid manner that allows them to share that expertise in those proofs with a potential employer a decentralized autonomous organization that they want to be part of or some other entity or group creating content. ✪
Evin: So we think that there is a really exciting chance for us to insert verifiable credentials into this process and to enable the web three education ecosystem the crypto education ecosystem to issue these credentials at a high velocity and to enable users to present them with similar speed and validity and so you know as we talked about like what are the killer use cases what are the use cases with high velocity. ✪
Evin: And for credential issuance and high velocity of demand for credential verification we see this sort of as a perfect storm and so to talk a little bit more about how how disco as a product offering and you know set of apis and sdks will begin to enable this universe I'll hand it over to Johnny to share a little bit more about our product Vision overall and then more specifically how we're thinking about initial use cases. ✪
Jonny: Yeah so thanks Evan so at disco what we're trying to do in the early part of April is launched something that can facilitate the user experience for the end user for interacting with verifiable credentials and did so I know I mean I don't know everybody here but I'm sure many of you have worked on maybe the standards and the protocols and you know that's something that I haven't. ✪
Jonny: Out you port back in the day where we were working on some of these things before these standards arose and. ✪
Jonny: Now that mean and Nota Bene and you know many others that are working you know building the building out these standards and figuring out a lot of the technical complexity under the hood evident eyes goal here is to bring a user experience layer to this that allows people who you know as as we see the abundance of issuers who are capable of signing verifiable credentials and issuing them to users we want to build a thing a product that allows a user to take custody of those. ✪
Jonny: He's agnostic form so many of the pocs we've worked on and seen in the past usually result in some proprietary app that works with the issuer so the issuer has its own app for the user to store their VC's in and we want to build something that is more under the users control so that's what disco is Disco allows a user to take custody of VCS issued from any number of issuers hopefully we want to expand to allowing lots of different type of VCS. ✪
Jonny: Based ones json-ld ones and we want to support all those we want to support user taking credentials from you know you know our friends at trinsic or and the evernham ecosystem or we have friends that's you know ontology and orange and then of course in the etherium ecosystem like Spruce and all of those things so we're built to start on ceramic as the storage layer but we want to integrate ID hubs and spruces Kepler and any of the. ✪
Jonny: others would be great to hear if anybody else is working on. ✪
Jonny: VC credential storage for end users we would love to integrate with you as well but in April we're planning to launch a tool that allows a user to receive these credentials in an inbox so you might use an issuing Library like spruces I did kit or something like that or Verano or something like that to issue credentials and to your user they can take custody of them using a web app which is Disco and we do this by. ✪
<taylor> Getting a look under the hood. Should be more accessible than many of these calls :)
Jonny: Web three infrastructure which is a theory of wallets that works well with ceramic so you just simply can Target a user's did by targeting their aetherium address using ether did and related also is 3id Method from ceramic that we also support and your user can take they don't need a wallet you know especially wallet they do need a web three wallet to start so something like a metal mask or rainbow or anything that's supported by wallet connect. ✪
Jonny: t' and the user can receive a credential to their inbox. ✪
Jonny: By default State decrypt it to add it to their public profile and then as they go on their Journey around web three they connect their wallets to all the subsequent apps even web to apps and those apps can call our API and read what credentials are issued to them by whom a lot of this is backed up by using verifiable credentials to a linked account so we don't want you know we're trying as best as possible to encourage people to link human-readable identifiers like Twitter accounts or. ✪
Jonny: The public identifiers that they're going to sign credentials with you know this is either using the dot well-known did configuration document method or just simply placing a verifiable credential proof at the DNS registrar you know as a txt record attached to that this allows you know when you present a user presents a credential to some other third party for that third party to know that it was signed by some human readable entity like you know University dot edu or something like. ✪
Jonny: Also are excited to introduce the ability for end users to sign credentials and issue them to other end users using VIP 712 sign typed data method in the etherium world so users will be able to issue credentials so I've worked in the space for you know many years and I haven't assigned very many credentials on my own has a non developer and a design and a designer I don't really use. ✪
Jonny: is the command line that much and things like that and. ✪
Jonny: There's only been a few products that I've used that allow me to sign with some keys in my control as of right now I know that there are probably some that I don't know about but we are really trying to make that accessible to the early adopters of these Technologies which we see as the web three community and they also have a lot of blockers right now that one of their core tenets of many of these use cases is being decentralized and part of that is the user data being decentralized and so we think it's a you know a very right. ✪
Jonny: Us to start getting very quick feedback loops on the usage of feces so there's lots of things I'm you know maybe we could talk about one of the conversations that we've been talking about recently is you know how do we allow like a dow who does wants to do education how do we allow them to sign you know credentials of proof of knowledge and things like that and that comes with some technical complexities but yeah that's what we plan to launch in April and there's a long-term. ✪
Jonny: Vision that I'm sure you're all familiar with in terms of you. ✪
Jonny: Space selective disclosure and verifiable presentation support being able to store credentials locally on device you know many of these things and happy to dig into any of that but I'll kick it back to you Evan. ✪
Evin: Awesome thank you so much Johnny so you know for today would love to invite any questions that anybody has if your organization's are interested in being able to deploy this technology we would love to chat with you but further beyond that were very interested in ensuring that the right standards make it into the hands of these credential issuers so very excited to to you know continue to Define that path for. ✪
Evin: Ecosystem of the a player that are in a position to be issuing credentials so that we can ensure compliance with the thoughtful decision making of this this particular body you know that there are a number of sort of ad hoc standards entities working to adopt shared standards so that we can express the full portability of these Primitives and so as we you know start to spin up collaborations using our products once they're live in. ✪
Evin: Contribute to the community started by those on this call and provide some real life use cases where we've got end-users hanging out and you know ready ready to engage these Technologies so I know we've been chatting for quite a long time so happy to you know open for any questions and just generally invite invite conversation on the floor. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: Thank you have any thank you Johnny great and thank you for joining us today I wanted to break the ice with the question that is around use cases so part of the work that we're doing right now is also collecting different use cases around be seized in education and specifically what use cases do you see connected to web three and education surfacing can you speak to that. ✪
Evin: Most certainly I know Johnny thinks about this a lot so I'll kick it over to him next but in the web three ecosystem there is not a standard set of formal reputation at Esther's there's not you know there are not a lot of Institutions that confer things like degrees or standardized achievements in the same way that we might you know enjoy transcripts and diplomas from more formalized institutions so there is a. ✪
Evin: vacuum in terms of the ways that people can. ✪
Evin: Aptitude with the subject matter but there is also a remarkable demand for individuals who can prove such aptitude because there are hundreds probably at this point thousands of companies seeking to seeking to hire folks who have expertise on web three subject matter and who also have Smart contracts deployed that are ready to be able to receive information such as verifiable credentials to be able to execute logic Within. ✪
Evin: Stations so unlike you know higher education and things like diplomas that are that are pretty low velocity pretty hard to earn you know ten of those in the year let's say for as an individual There's an opportunity to both generate you know earn a variety of different proofs of aptitude and there's a lot of Demands to be able to read all of those as well and so in the absence of formal credentialing in the web three space we see an opportunity. ✪
Evin: Credentialing you know between the web three education providers and the and the individuals seeking employment in this space as well as the the many different employers who are currently struggling to find people that have the basic knowledge required to participate in their in their organizations and so we're seeing you know as with much of the traditional techies ecosystem in web 3 you know something like 40 to 60%. ✪
Evin: Existing team because there is this massive discoverability problem so because you know Atomic identity and an atomic data allows us to solve that discoverability problem we see this as a great opportunity for dids and VC's to be the transport layer for such qualifying information any further thoughts there and on the unique opportunity in the web three ecosystem right now. ✪
Jonny: Yeah no I think you basically covered it I mean maybe I'm just reiterate a couple things there is just yeah we've seen the giant influx of I mean there's a massive migration having around especially web to devs and other you know tech knowledge workers trying to break into the web three space there is a huge demand I mean our team is hiring we want to hire these people all of our friends in the web three kind of ecosystem. ✪
Jonny: With a lot of VC cash that are trying to expand our trying to hire like crazy and one of the big things is they want to know does this person have a knowledge of the space and the nuances of working in web three do you know anything about in FTS and dowse etc etc cows have you know had you know are on the rise you know like many other crypto based narratives of the past will see how it evolves in the future but right now dowser looking for people that. ✪
Jonny: Out of Minton FTS can make generative art can do all of these things and there aren't any formal educational institutions that teach this so there are no formal verifiable credentials that can prove this so that Gap is being filled by bespoke you know institutions that offer courses it mean it looks like you know the type of the web 3 version of things like Coursera and you to me where people just generates content and learning things are good friend Austin Griffith he has speed. ✪
Jonny: G to try and get web to developers up to speed on on web three and there are no formal certifications or anything like that there's a couple of entities that some of y'all might be familiar with like C4 our former you know there's our friends at consensus Academy and some attempts here to formalize what an education means and in terms of these topics but it's all very nascent and we're trying to figure out how to allow you know YouTube content. ✪
Jonny: has that teach solidity and you know off. ✪
Jonny: And these other things like the learn web three Dow how they can issue credentials efficiently and according to a standard in which all of these entities interoperate and are all issuing at least from the same set of schemas for different topics to to allow us to ease the transition of people into the web three space give them an obvious path and steps to take which is hey I'm a web to person I want to move into web 3. ✪
Jonny: And how can I get proofs of that so I can easily disclose those credentials in some hiring process and so that's kind of where you know we see disco is being a vehicle through which a user can receive those credentials and then disclose them in the hiring process but right now yeah we need to we as a you know kind of our on our business development side of things where we're reaching out to many of these organizations and having conversations with them and we want to be able to confidently steer them in the right direction. ✪
Jonny: direction around what how to construct the credentials that they would end up being. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: Thank you very much I think a positive outcome of this chat would be to add one on one or many of these Americans use cases to the list of we're tracking so great Carrie had a question carried over to you thank you. ✪
Kerri Lemoie: Thanks for being here today this is a super interesting it and Johnny said something about structure and that's kind of a good segue to rid of my questions here many of us here on this called maybe not everyone put if you are familiar with open badges which have been around for quite a long time so these concept of open recognition and being able to recognize outside of side of formalized Education resonates with us really strongly right and so what we've been trying to do is. ✪
Kerri Lemoie: Aligned standards Lake open badges. ✪
Kerri Lemoie: Record which is a similar but it's a multiple credential or sake open badges a single achievement clrs multiple and there are other education achievements to and there's also a networks to finding skilled definitions and all sorts of structure that is coming into play there probably would be coming in even if we didn't have web 3 we're right now we're trying to do is make all of this fit together into verifiable credentials and so what we have a lot in our space is a lot of wallets who are going to be. ✪
Kerri Lemoie: Very specific to education that are going to know understand how to display. ✪
Kerri Lemoie: This content and you mentioned a meta mask and other web while it's and I was wondering like how you think you're going to approach that and like taking the structure and getting it more globally understood in the way that you're talking about. ✪
Jonny: Yeah so I guess one of our goals and you know where we see the opportunity is to build a system that allows a user to interact with credentials without really needing to adopt any net new infrastructure right so back in the day when I worked on you port we had to have a special you port wallet to do a lot of things and this was a big blocker to adoption at least. ✪
Jonny: Still be now people didn't want to have their meta mask for instance at least in the web three aetherium world and want to have to have a metal mask app and then also jump over to the you poor tap to disclose their credentials so we're trying to make this integrate with the current tools that we see web through users having already and that's our first goal is evm compatible wallets which also include chains outside of the etherium world so. ✪
Jonny: So we know that there's been some talk and I have actually not currently up to date with it all about the progress of trying to make open badges compatible with the VC standards it would be great if a etherium wallet so in or some etherium keys according to the way those keys are constructed can sign valid open badges / verifiable credentials and issue them. ✪
Jonny: We're going to see and to allow etherium users to disclose and do verifiable presentations on those things using those keys that they already have so yeah that's that's kind of forgot your question as I was rambling there but I I think that yes we are totally down with open Badges and it would be great if they are turned into VCS oh yeah. ✪
Jonny: I think for us we are at the intersection of a lot of different use cases so not just specifically education so there's you know lots of stuff happening in the entertainment and con Creator space in the web three world so you know music and no other things and ft artists and all of this stuff they want to also take advantage of verifiable credential so we're trying to build a interface that for taking custody and interacting with this type of data that is pretty use case. ✪
Jonny: Gnostic now one of the big the two big verticals are. ✪
Jonny: Education for US future of work and all of those things and also kind of entertainment media Creator stuff you know fan relationships proof of fandom you know these types of things that people are trying to currently build decentralized communities around so that's why we're trying to build something that is you know that we don't want to be too opinionated on our interface in an hour app about it being for Education explicitly so we need we need to be kind of vanilla in that. ✪
<kerri_lemoie> One thing we've discussed in VC-EDU is providing info in the credential on how to display it.
Jonny: So yeah that's that's at least our approach so the things whatever comes out of here out of the you know the educational credentials working group we would want it to not be specific to specific at least and its underlying structure and I don't think y'all are probably going to do that but to educational use cases we would want you know any educational credential to be able to sit just alongside and the exact same user interaction patterns that exact same ux to take custody of credentials for other things as well. ✪
Nate_Otto_(Badgr/CSky): You're attacking carry their who is one of the people deeply involved in the open badges compatibility effort getting that to be C standard as far as timeline there we expect the standard to be pretty much finalized sometime this year and within a few weeks we'll be able to start doing prototype examples of signed credentials which brings me to my question which is if we want to say that one of the important next steps here is to identify what whether we can. ✪
Nate_Otto_(Badgr/CSky): Sign one of these things with an aetherium key do you have. ✪
Nate_Otto_(Badgr/CSky): To as to what the proof method is that we should use there or some example signed Json so that we can show how that would with one of the two educational use cases within open badges or anything else we talked about here in d.c. edu those two use cases being a skill assertion recipient has the skill or a defined achievement assertion recipient has met the criteria of a particular degree or other achievements. ✪
Jonny: Yeah so I think we'll try and find some links we're really building on some of our team has kind of extended I don't know if it's fully compliant at this stage so maybe we're a little bit ahead of the standards just out of necessity for you know going to mark it on some things and building out some things and so we were building on it with a team called ver Amo what their underlying Library. ✪
Jonny: To use the EIP 712 sign type data standard in in aetherium this allows you to sign structure human readable data which can be formatted as a valid VC and signed with those etherium keys and then you know and I think and it and it works fine for our use case it is not universally compatible yet with me not every type of key it's a it's a specific signature method that. ✪
Jonny: MPS but you know non evm chains is still to be you know figured out spruces did kit I believe there are libraries also allow for this and we might adopt that as well they they were built in originally did this using tasos keys which I think are evm compatible keys I can't be sure I would have to you know look back at the libraries but yeah so right now let me see. ✪
Jonny: Follow up if you if you have something but I'm going to ping my team and see if I can find out right now so I can drop you a link on on the libraries that we're using for that metal mask a siding. ✪
Nate_Otto_(Badgr/CSky): Great thanks so much and as a quick follow-up maybe maybe for Evan what would the user experience be like that you imagine for the signing of a particular I'm credential and where do you see the sort of biggest friction points in terms of building something sensible for onboarding a large number of people to be able to participate in an open educational based recognition. ✪
Evin: Great question I'll actually throw the backs of Johnny and a quick second but the sort of brief takeaway is that user experience will be defining in a how successful everything that occurs after that onboarding is and so disco we are very focused on enabling the sort of smoothest most unintrusive process I guess you might say you know our expectations are. ✪
Evin: You know we forget those when we come to to web three or decentralized experiences and so with that in mind I'll hand it over to Johnny to talk a little bit more about you know what that what that process of onboarding looks like and you know what it what it feel will feel like at least to start to start of obtaining these credentials. ✪
Jonny: Yeah so in the past one of the you know back in our experience with in other SSI teams this looks like and I think it still is in a lot of cases it says Hey I've done something in your context you want to send me a credential there's you know there's a lot of times this has been download this app to receive your credential that's been a big blocker and and we've seen it you know firsthand. ✪
Jonny: Credential for you until you get a wallet and then you can take custody of it or it uses you know there's been experiments with like chappie and stuff which is like local storage in the browser and you know these not great ux but these like browser dialogues that allow you to interact and see that you've received a credential Etc we're trying a different approach which is we think that while somebody might just show up to disco dot x y z and kit connect wallet and login with or authenticate with meta mask or something like that. ✪
Jonny: at and have an inbox and start there we think. ✪
Jonny: Of the flow that we're optimizing for is we have a lot of partners that want to issue credentials and though the the first time you X4 somebody interacting with the credential probably happen outside of disco it'll be we have friends that rabbit hole for instance and they kind of do kind of gamified onboarding into web three they ask you to complete some typical web three tasks a like you know do a token swap or you know steak some coins in a contract or a Min ft or something like that all of this is a little cost-prohibitive. ✪
Jonny: for new users right now but hopefully that those costs come down or they. ✪
Jonny: Is kind of modules on to layer two things etcetera Etc anyway putting that aside when the user needs to receive this credential we want the user experience to be one in which hey you have a user you have a verifiable credential we have you can you can get it at disco dot x y z it'll be sitting there in purgatory essentially associated with that user storage and only their keys because. ✪
Jonny: Identifier and you can encrypt against that and they send it to us to our API we deposit that into some ceramic storage but that might change as we onboard new storage providers one that we're super excited about is privy which has much more you know better privacy-preserving attributes and the user shows up they can follow the link from rabbit hole and now they don't have to download an app but we know that they already have the infrastructure they need which is. ✪
Jonny: met a mask or something like that and they. ✪
Jonny: Connect to disco and they will have a notification there that says hey you have a credential waiting for you would you like to add it to your profile and then now we have on-boarded a single user with their first verifiable credential into the space now there's also an alternate path where you do come to disco first and you set up your profile there and we are going to issue some credentials to try and kind of gamify onboarding and we also plan to support a kind of like a Marketplace of like hey I'm here I've got some etherium keys I can take custody of. ✪
Jonny: What should I do right and we want to be able to populate that marketplace with both issuers and relying parties and make that easy for a user to navigate it's very similar to the types of things you see when a layer 2 blockchain launches in the etherium world the very first thing they launched with is a bridge for bridging your assets and then also they launched with a Marketplace of what daps exist and are deployed on this block chain that you can go use right now if you have if you have bridged your assets and so I think we're going to need. ✪
Jonny: need something very similar there for onboarding users into the verifiable credentials. ✪
Jonny: Like these disparate unconnected pocs we need a place we need a Marketplace of like I can do more than just the one thing I showed up for where do I do the third fourth fifth sixth seventh thing so that's how we're approaching it right now. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: One else has a question I feel but I don't want to take up all this our time all right Taylor take it oh thanks. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: +1 To the compelling and accessible narrative ✪
Taylor: Yeah hey thanks thanks a million good to hear from you Evan and Johnny as always I think this is this is broader but I'm curious and giving credit where credit is due I think you guys have some of the most sort of accessible narratives and language around just just making this real and and you know giving Folks at on-ramp to actually think about moving this direction so curious just to yeah get thoughts on like I mean I think there's still a huge just knowledge Gap obviously. ✪
Taylor: Of a community like this just discussing this stuff gets really tricky so and part of our role at learning economy is to hopefully you know make some of this a little more accessible so yeah I would love to just kind of here or Riff on ideas around you know different analogies and ways in which you discuss this that that seems to be bridging gaps in knowledge gaps I think that's almost as important as getting some of the tech right is to make sure we have you know easy version. ✪
Taylor: Ian's of this that folks can sink their teeth into so yeah Evan. ✪
Taylor: You've got you've just got a magic touch with with language to make some of this seem very approachable for folks so yeah any good analogies anyways you know what's resonated with other folks that are not necessarily you know in this world or you know web three natives. ✪
<chris_kelly_(dif)> +1!
Evin: Taylor you're the best always so wonderful to be able to jam with you and I think you know you are spot on like in the early 1960s Marshall mcluhan taught us that the medium is the message and our takeaway from 2022 is that the meme is the message we need analogies metaphors tangible examples that people can reach for to help them understand the relationship between these New Primitives and the role that they can play in their actual lives outside the protocol. ✪
Evin: and so one thing you know I'm sure maybe it maybe Johnny. ✪
<simone_ravaioli> we should associate one meme to every use case :-)
Evin: I think that's really surprising to me is that folks who are not web three native understand the concept of verifiable credentials very swiftly it hits right away if your framework is of assumption does not start at a public blockchain now for those who do come from the web three ecosystem I've found that relating verifiable credentials to n FTS so contrasting them from another known primitive has been really successful. ✪
<sharon_leu> But what about people who aren't even digitally native? What is their onboarding experience?
Evin: Immutable intended to be transferable verifiable credentials are private off chain revocable or can be set to expire then subject to you know sharing in a course with a consent and participation of the subject and so looking at verifiable credentials as sort of an off chain encrypted payload that can be presented and curated in the same way as in nft but is specifically for more non-transferable traits that that that hits. ✪
<nate_otto_(badgr/csky)> Backpack: coming full circle to Open Badges circa 2011
Evin: Terms I have started to refer to the combination of decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials as a data backpack your data backpack for the metaverse allowing you to be an ownership and control of what comes with you allowing you to you know choose from your backpack and disclose the information that you want to share and that when you leave like items that would carry you carry around in your backpack when you leave those items come with you this assets come with you in addition. ✪
Evin: Like hardcore nerds we have on this call though I feel like I probably got a few of you here you might be familiar with live action role playing or LARPing and so this sort of gamified experience in real life kind of playing out playing out battles with foam swords is also very similar to the experience that we have in digital video games where you know as you're playing through a video game you might have a satchel a loot bag a Loot Crate. ✪
Evin: The valuable assets that you encounter as you play the game as you go along and so at this Co we're saying that you know life is a giant LARP a giant live action role play but without a loot bag without somewhere for you to carry around the awesome data that you're creating you create it and then you just have to leave it in the context where it was produced you know subjecting that data to centralized storage or Worse publication and a public Ledger and so so in the same way that we can enjoy the poor. ✪
Evin: In tokens assets and cryptocurrencies we should be able to enjoy similar portability for the rest of our data and that's what a data backpack that's what I did and BC combo allows us to enjoy as users Johnny I know that you're also very very deep in the memes anything that that has hit that's not heading different ways that we've started to think about this. ✪
Jonny: Yeah so we have a form on our website right now that has a field in it you use it to sign up for you know more information on Disco it's you know we have a pretty basic site right now until we get closer to our launch in April but in that form there's a field that says share your metaverse dream right and we've had a thousand responses just in the past month so far and I've monitored them all I've read them all and the data backpack comes. ✪
Jonny: That is the skeuomorphic thing that people seem at least in the language that we floated has that that is seeming to stick I totally agree with Evan know that you know it's something that I've tried myself is of course since we are embedded in like the very deep web 3 community and aetherium people and are at those conferences and those are typically the people we're talking to in Ft is the obvious reference point off chain and FTS like that for people that are understand and FTS you see off chain and FTA. ✪
Jonny: and they maybe have a couple questions but at least they have. ✪
Jonny: It gets a little closer the thing that I've always talked about with other people that seems to resonate in some user interviews if they're familiar with crypto again this kind of is a pretext for it which is lots of people are coming to understand the way that in which Bitcoin or etherium allow you to do digitally what you can do kind of physically which is the transfer of you know cash you know hand-to-hand cash right like aetherium and Bitcoin or you know trying to make. ✪
<kerri_lemoie> @Evin & @Jonny - do you have a link to a slide deck you can share?
Jonny: Ace we have the same type thing when we ever we use our license at like let's say a bar right they scan your license a physical object or you drop it in one of those little boxes that that scan it or they use their light on it or whatever and none of these things require the relying party or the bar in this instance or the bouncer to call the Department of State or the DMV or anything like that to know whether or not this credential is real and so in this. ✪
Jonny: the same way that we've taken the physical interaction. ✪
Jonny: And made it digital without needing a middle person we want to do the same thing for all the other things that might be in your wallet outside of your financial assets so that's been something that when people call me and ask me to you know explain disco to them like my friends you know back home that you know I've heard about it that's the my go-to thing and that seems to really close the gap and they're like oh you know that makes a lot of sense I get how they already are kind of familiar with how the. ✪
Jonny: the the promise of the crypto asset stuff and we're simply saying this. ✪
Jonny: Log but for all of the other things that would be in your wallet so that's been relatively useful. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: Thank you Johnny thank you we have a question from Sharon so what about people that are not digital native what's your onboarding experience. ✪
Evin: Great questions so of course you know we can't boil the ocean and serve all people at all times just from Day Zero so to begin as we work out the Kinks of you know deploying this this ecosystem of capability our first set of users is existing web three native wallet holders so folks who are already managing key pairs already comfortable with the material compatible wallet from there will be scaling up to incorporate other web 3 base chain. ✪
Evin: seems like Bitcoin and Solana and once we feel. ✪
Evin: Assured in the user experience that we are delivering being you know on on par with the kinds of app and DEP experiences that we would expect with Excellence then we will begin exploring things like custodial options that will allow you to sign in with a more a more basic identifiers looking username and password however we think that the merits of you know having public signing keys that that are you know on chain and able to execute more. ✪
Evin: more than just signing off chain data we think putting those in the hands of users. ✪
Evin: Is critically important so our hope is that the user experience and onboarding journey for what every will mature as does discos and that you know we can meet somewhere in the middle certainly a better a better user flow than we have today however in thinking about those custodian experiences those experiences that are relevant for users who may not be managing the existing key pair or actually working with a variety of luxury web to retail vendors retail brands that. ✪
Evin: that do not have web three meat of users but are excited. ✪
Evin: Proofs of purchase receipts as verifiable credentials so through working through that use case I think we'll get to a much clearer definition of what an outstanding user flow can look like but because we're not starting with a custodial option that will definitely be something we explore a little bit later Johnny is our sort of user experience and design wizard any further thoughts on on how in the future we'll be exploring custodial options. ✪
Jonny: Yes oh I mean your point is well-taken onboarding non you know web native people specially non even web three people is quite the hurdle one that we've engaged with a lot you know we've we've worked on you know in other SSI teams you know worked on you know Refugee identity and citizen identity and a lot of these things and key man. ✪
Jonny: You however I guess from are just our road in terms of adoption we think we can get our first I don't know million users from people that already have you know that are already cut studying their own Keys rights and so that's why we think right now is a time that we can actually get a critical mass build a business without having to engage with that problem yet and we think you know when we worked on those problems. ✪
Jonny: A lot of that stuff in the in the in the the infrastructure that was available was just not the feedback Cycles weren't fast enough and the maturation of the ux of many of these wallets that we were asking these users to download weren't great so we're taking a more stepwise approach where we're trying to get credentials into the hands of people that have shown that they are early adopters first and iterate there it's kind of. ✪
Jonny: Personally for me it's very much based on Clayton christensen's disruption theory for back in the 90s where you know the the assertion in that book is that one of the best ways to to facilitate the emergence of a disruptive technology is to look at small Niche audiences first and iterate very very quickly there and so that's that's where we see the most fertile ground for iteration without these other blockers but. ✪
Jonny: Of how do we finally cross that Chasm yeah I think that there are some interesting work done by our friends at Spruce with session Keys which are kind of like a femoral signing keys that are that can be dids that allow you to log in maybe via a regular oauth method and generate keys that are for that session to be able to interact with credentials and do certain things and then they are gone but there is a. ✪
Jonny: Um to show that any credential signed in the past by some keys that are no longer existent we're still valid at the time could be a bridge into making the experience feel like you're not doing full on private Key Management back in the day at you port we worked on some of the early research around social recovery and even went as far as to do off chain social recovery using Shamir. ✪
Jonny: and you know rather than like a smart contract based. ✪
Jonny: Same thing and you know this was an attempt that I'd really love to see disco or any other teams I bring it up in the you know the diff calls as well like what is the current state of the art and social recovery like has anybody really fully tried to deploy the sergeant does it but they do it with the smart contract which was our early design at you port but there's some there's some problems with privacy and collusion and everything there so I'd really love to see us do more experiments with that. ✪
Jonny: That are linked to human readable other human readable identifiers like what we're trying to do a disco in which public key can be verifiably linked to a Twitter account and domain and all of these things I think we can actually create a good ux around social or distributed recovery and that might help ease the burden of actually getting somebody from zero to self Sovereign and then finally you know. ✪
Jonny: Did the D.C.'s offer the ability especially against just dudes on their own offer the ability for us to rotate the controlling keys of an identifier and so we could see that disco custody being a did for the user and then when they are ready to off-board out of discos management though they can still use our interface for interacting with their data but they can rotate to say they install metal mask and then they can they can make that transfer happen you know revoking or. ✪
Jonny: Cisco managed keys to some keys that they manage when there are ready and so that is a pattern that is likely going to be on our radar for you know testing and implementation near the end of this year. ✪
<chris_kelly_(dif)> What a great session! Thanks Evin & Jonny
Simone Ravaoli: All right awesome thanks again Johnny and Evan we are coming up at the end of you know our session together and I did put myself in the queue because I have a question that I wanted to keep for last but just possibly more as a teaser for something that we want to address more in the future and this is the difference between n ftes and verifiable credentials so could you in just a rapid-fire maybe give us you know what are the three main differences between the twos. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: In like three minutes and then the call for everyone. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: Like more info about this conversation we have already started and so we may have another similar session like this where we just focus on this have been and Johnny just to close out thank you. ✪
Evin: Sure yeah one of my favorite things is a rapid-fire comparison between did zandor between be seized and FTS so nft s as we know are globally available public immutable transferable assets when they're not transferable they diminish the autonomy of their users by enabling for a token ID to be immutably mapped to their public address without their consent and participation it's verifiable credentials as we know are kind of the opposite side. ✪
Evin: False they can be revoked or be set to expire though they can contain any data payload like an NF T is you are I can point to anything they are non-transferable once they are issued and so like a diploma once they're written about you they will always be written about you even though the Json file can itself be transferred the content cannot be migrated to describe a different party they are revocable or can be set to expire and can be disclosed. ✪
Evin: The subject prefers whether in plain text or you know it's something like predicate disclosure that allows you to interrogate a specific field without revealing that plain text I think those are kind of the high points that I like to hit in that comparison I always like to remind folks that did sign and keys are also can also be rotated and so we have just greater flexibility there than we do for your standard public identifier Johnny is where sign of any other. ✪
Evin: any other comparisons that we'd like to draw here. ✪
Jonny: Yeah I mean I think that there is a bit of a at least a narrative arms race happening between in ftes and VCS so you know first thing we point out and if T is transferable well then in Ft Advocates come back with non-transferable enough teeth and we say okay well then there you know the data is public and you're putting Pi on chain well then they say will have the nft point to some off chain resource and that will be in zero not you know like a using a ZK scheme and it'll be you know private then we. ✪
Jonny: If you need to route you know use new keys because you know maybe your wallet at you think it might have been compromised well did there will be implemented a standard that allows the transferable the transfer of that nft only if some other address can prove that there's a mutual ownership between the first address in the next address so there's a bit of this like I think and then you know then there's the conversations around forward encryption guarantees into the future and then you get into a conversation. ✪
Jonny: Distant you know encryption and these things so I think that that's like where we are I think at a meta level for for us we just think that the mft approach feels like a hack it feels like we are taking something that was built for some other purpose and trying to make it fit into the shape we want it to where we have something that is in purpose-built to solve the problem that you know other teams are trying to solve within FTS now that doesn't mean. ✪
Jonny: Obviously mean that these are going to win of course Evan and I think they will and we're going to you know help make we do believe fundamentally that it should be these verses or you know team should be using VCS rather than in FTS but yeah there is a bit of a you know if you get if you start talking to somebody who really is working on the nft side of this there are a lot of theoretical answers for solving these problems and that's correct that's the current state of the conversation as. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: Awesome I think there is probably you know one thing that we can learn from and if T is as in the fast kind of adoption or hype that has created maybe leading to adoption you know so maybe it's a question around how they connect to your identity and how expressive you could be with that so this is again I kept this for last because I know we can go down this rabbit hole for a long time we start to collect some feedbacks in conversations even within the credentials committee. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: To group and that could be the base of something that. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: Share with the public that helps to elevate or inform the level of the conversation so you know happy if you want to contribute to and this clearly is for everyone as well here. ✪
<chris_kelly_(dif)> :clap:
Jonny: One one one last comment I'll make than you know where over time is that I think what in ft's have done that we have maybe not focus too much on but we want to focus on It Disco is the skeuomorphic nature of an ft's they feel like ownable objects you can see them on screen you can show them to other people they have a they sit in a box that feels tangible right and one of the things. ✪
Jonny: Sexualize VCS when they are simply Json blobs stored in your apps storage or something like that and I think I know that open Badges and things like this have tried to create these like objects that you can see on screen that people can feel something about and I think that that just what in FTS have done really well they can display them in a gallery online as things that they own right and this is the cognitive bridge I think. ✪
Jonny: Really lean into with with VCS if we're going to compete against that and ft narrative. ✪
<taylor> Need function of VCs with culture of NFTs
Simone Ravaoli: Lovely I like how we ended on that note I think we've seen can hints of the genetic code of open badges coming back into this conversation whether it's the backpack whether it's you know this Cube morphic nature of this kind of credentials and it's good thing that part of the work. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: Lee also informing the next version of open badges which is going to be a very viable credentials and that's really like a clear outcome that we have here so well thanks for sharing your story glad to be on this journey together again good luck with this girl I guess see on the dance floor and look for looking forward to have you back here again tell us some updates or maybe diving to the end of T versus verifiable initials question all right so. ✪
Simone Ravaoli: I guess we took a few minutes to go over time we were supposed to briefly review the use cases carry as drop the link in the chat but it's the same link would pick that up next week and lovely awesome thanks again having thanks again Johnny thank you everyone see you next week. ✪