In London today, we're announcing the formation of the Sovrin Foundation. Sovrin Foundation is a private-sector, international non-profit that was established to govern the Sovrin Identity Network (SIDN). SIDN is a public, permissioned distributed ledger purpose built for identities.
The Internet was created without any way for people and organizations to be identified. On the Internet, only machines get identities in the form of IP numbers. This is understandable given what the creators of the Internet were trying to achieve. But the lack of a decentralized, heterarchical, and interoperable identity system has created an environment where the services most people use online are a lot more centralized than the Internet they're built upon.
Sovrin Foundation aims to rectify that. Using the virtues of Internet as a model, The Sovrin identity protocol uses a distributed ledger to replace today's centralized identity intermediaries. I believe an Internet-like identity system will create new opportunities for everyone by streamlining interactions and enabling stronger levels of trust.
As I wrote earlier, self-sovereign identity creates a vast new identity ecosystem because it frees millions of organizations to write claims on the ledger. Sovrin is designed to allow this ecosystem of claims providers to thrive.
A permissioned ledger needs a governance process to determine the business processes and overarching legal framework that validators on the network must follow to ensure that2 SIDN can be trusted. Sovrin Foundation provides the lightweight governance that is needed to do that. Sovrin Foundation governs the network and the open-source code that makes it work, but we don't own or control people's identities, they are sovereign.
The Foundation has four primary duties:
- Develop and maintain the Sovrin Trust Framework, governing the selection and monitoring of Sovrin stewards and operation of the Sovrin Ledger.
- Coordinate and monitor steward activity to ensure the ledger is stable, correct, and trustworthy.
- Manage the Sovrin Project—the open source code that operates, validates, and provides access to the ledger.
- Promote universal acceptance of the Sovrin ledger for self-sovereign identity.
I've agreed to serve as the inaugural chair of the foundation. I co-founded the Internet Identity Workshop with Kaliya Hamlin and Doc Searls a dozen years ago with the goal of promoting what we then called "user-centric identity." My motivations in doing that were the same as they are here: find a way to unlock the vast potential of people who own and control their online identity.
We have a tremendous, global Board of Trustees who have agreed to serve and help organize the foundation. Each person on the board brings unique talents and perspective. I'm excited to work with them in organizing Sovrin Foundation and bringing this to fruition.
Evernym developed the code that makes Sovrin work and has generously gifted that code to Sovrin Foundation. Making it open source wasn't enough. Sovrin Foundation can't govern SIDN without also owning the code that makes it work. Timothy Ruff and Jason Law, Evernym's founders, saw early on that the best way to make Sovrin successful was to give it away. Sovrin Foundation is grateful for their support and this demonstration of trust.
You can get more information from the following links:
If you'd like to know more, feel free to contact us. We invite your participation.
