Verifiable Credentials enable decentralized and scalable identity systems but require reliable trust decisions across ecosystem boundaries. While cryptographic verification establishes authenticity and integrity, determining whether an issuer is authorized to issue a credential, for example, depends on external authoritative data supplied by a governance authority and typically represented as trust graphs, such as trust registries. The coexistence of multiple incompatible technical representations of authoritative data currently impedes interoperability across ecosystems. This paper proposes an architecture model that envisages the dynamic loading of trust protocol drivers at verification time, enabling evaluating parties to access authoritative data from previously unknown trust registries without prior ecosystem-specific knowledge. The architecture model introduces a governed trust protocol driver registry and an execution environment that installs and executes trust protocol drivers on demand. A proof-of-concept implementation provides an initial indication of the approach’s feasibility and demonstrates technical interoperability across registry-based ecosystems.
Biele et al. (Thu,) studied this question.