Sovrin Foundation Announces New Task Forces Focused on Token and Public Write Access

July 29, 2020

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The power behind the Sovrin Foundation is its strong community which is made up of individuals and organizations united in their support of the Sovrin Network and in their mission to create a global public utility for Identity for All. Since the network’s launch in 2017, the path to a public utility has been blocked by two main challenges:

  1. Regulatory compliance, privacy and data protection. Not only are DIDs defined as personal data by regulators, but there is also the risk that personal data from bad or incompetent actors could be written to an immutable ledger, thus falling foul of regulations such as ‘the right to be forgotten’.
  2. Security risks. If anyone can publish then how are you going to stop spam or abusive writes to the ledger?

In order to help address these challenges, the Sovrin Network was deployed in two phases; the first being Permissioned Write Access where only approved Transaction Authors that are legal entities may write non-personal data transactions to the ledger and the second being Public Write Access where the Sovrin Network can open up to all Transaction Authors, including natural persons and things.

One of the primary purposes of the Sovrin Token was to provide a mechanism for moving the Network to public write access. The token was designed to function as a utility that would provide privacy, in-network value transfer and non-discriminatory access. However, as is often the case when borrowing a technology from another domain (in this case the world of crypto-currency), the token introduced new legal and business challenges that have prevented the minting of a Sovrin Token. 

Much has changed since 2017. Sovrin can take advantage of new market conditions and new technical solutions, such as KERI, to enable public write access. Perhaps most importantly of all, there are new SSI networks emerging and new mechanisms to achieving decentralization and resilience for a true global public utility. The solution is interoperability between these SSI networks: a network of networks.

With this evolution, we have a major opportunity for new thinking, innovation and thought leadership from the Sovrin community to answer these crucial questions:

To answer these questions, the Sovrin Foundation is excited to announce the formation of two new task forces: 

Token Task Force

The purpose of the Token Task Force is to explore the development and launch of a token in the context of a network of networks (specifically an interoperable set of public utility networks as defined by Layer One of the Trust over IP stack).

Public Write Access Task Force

The purpose of the Public Write Access Task Force is to develop the business and technical requirement specifications for the Sovrin Ledger to transition from Permissioned Write Access to Public Write Access. 

Both of these Task Forces will need to consider questions of regulatory compliance, privacy, censorship resistance, inclusion and commercial models for different network stakeholders, so participants are called from legal, technical, business and academic domains. 

How to Participate

Participation in Sovrin task forces is open to anyone; no application is required. The Foundation invites anyone who has a genuine interest in either of these two new task forces to participate. If you would like to volunteer for either of the task forces, please email info@sovrin.org with the task force name in the subject line and we will reach out shortly thereafter. 

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