A joint working group under Trust Over IP (ToIP) and the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), hosted within LF Decentralized Trust.
- About This Repository
- DTGWG Overview
- DTGWG Scope
- Task Force Repositories
- LF Decentralized Trust Labs
- Participation & Governance
- How to Participate
- License
This is the umbrella repository for the Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group (DTGWG) — the central index and entry point for the working group.
It links to the individual repositories maintained by each DTGWG Task Force, where corresponding topic-specific specifications, deliverables, and discussions live, as well as to the LF Decentralized Trust Labs that provide early-stage implementations of the work done in the task forces.
Beyond navigation, this umbrella repository acts as the "glue between the pieces" serving as the home for overarching conversations and developments that span task forces, such as the architecture concepts or onboarding flows that draw on and integrate deliverables from across the group.
The DTGWG develops the specifications, components, tooling, and governance components needed to build a decentralized trust graph — enabling proof of personhood and the creation of verifiable relationships between people, groups, organizations, AI agents, and other parties — with no centralized database.
Every party controls their own portable subgraph of the DTG through their own digital agents and wallets.
The DTGWG covers the full stack of specifications required for a functioning decentralized trust graph, including:
- Key management and recovery
- Verifiable identifiers and verifiable credentials
- Verifiable relationship credentials and social vouching
- Relationship cards (r-cards)
- Privacy-preserving zero-knowledge proofs
- Trust task protocols and trust registries
- Out-of-band introductions
- UI/UX affordances for sovereign wallets
The work uses open W3C standards — principally the Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) 1.0 and the Verifiable Credentials Data Model 2.0 —
It builds on Design Principles for the ToIP Stack, the ToIP Technology Architecture Specification, other ToIP technical specifications, and complementary open standards for decentralized digital trust infrastructure.
Each DTGWG Task Force operates its own repository. The following table shows the different task forces with a short description and a link to the corresponding repository.
| Task Force | Focus Area | Repository |
|---|---|---|
| Risk Assessment & Harms Prevention | Analyses the overall requirements and potential harms for a successful decentralized trust graph, produces a risk assessment analysis and a recommendation on policies and best practices to prevent harms. | dtgwg-rahp-tf |
| Credentials | Define the technical requirements for personhood credentials (PHCs) and verifiable relationship credential (VRCs), including credential formats, signature algorithms, zero-knowledge proofs, and revocation mechanisms. | dtgwg-cred-tf |
| R-Cards | Define the technical requirements for relationship card (r-card) interoperability and extensibility. | dtgwg-rcards-tf |
| Trust Task Protocols | Define trust task protocols for standard DTG trust tasks, including QR codes, pairwise private DID exchange, PHC/VRC issuance and verification, r-card exchange, and personal private channels. | dtgwg-trust-tasks-tf |
| Agent Names | Define a syntax, resolution protocol, and service endpoints for URL strings that resolve to DIDs and DID documents for communicating with DTG verifiable trust agents (VTAs). | dtgwg-agent-names-tf |
| DTG UX | Define UX requirements and guidelines for sovereign wallets and standard user ceremonies for each of the primary trust tasks above. | TBA |
LF Decentralized Trust Labs host early-stage implementations of DTGWG components. The following table shows the different trust labs of the DTGWG with a short description and a link to the corresponding repository.
| Lab Name | Description | Repository |
|---|---|---|
| DTG Credentials | Early implementation to the DTG Credential specification v0.3. | dtg-credentials |
| OpenVTC | Implements open standards and protocols to enable "Know Your Developer" capabilities, following the First Person Project white paper for establishing and verifying first-person trust relationships using Personhood Credentials (PHCs) and Verifiable Relationship Credentials (VRCs). | openvtc |
| Verifiable Trust Infrastructure — Verifiable Trust Agent | A Verifiable Trust Agent (VTA) is an always-on service that manages cryptographic keys, DIDs, and access-control policies for a Verifiable Trust Community. This repository contains the VTA service, a shared SDK, and the Community Network Manager (CNM) CLI. | verifiable-trust-infrastructure |
| Information | DTGWG Confluence page |
| Copyright | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 |
| Patent mode | W3C Mode |
| Source Code | Apache 2.0 |
Since the DTGWG is a joint working group, participation in it or any of the DTGWG Task Forces is open through either ToIP or DIF members:
- Join Trust Over IP as a member or observer.
- Or join the Decentralized Identity Foundation as a member.
- Then, sign up for the DTGWG mailing list and accept the WG charter.
- Attend a weekly working group call — details on the DTGWG Confluence page linked above.
- Documentation: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
- Patent mode: W3C Mode (based on the W3C Patent Policy)
This repository is the umbrella index for DTGWG. Specifications and deliverables live in the Task Force repositories and implementations in the LF Decentralized Trust Lab repositories both linked in the tables above.