Roles

TAOs

In Verifiable Credentials use cases, a TAO is an organisation that can accredit an issuer with the ability to issue certain types of Verifiable Credentials. In the first phase of the OnePass use case, the TAO will be the TAO committee chaired by the project coordinator and with 1 representative of each OnePass project consortium partner. In the later phases of the project, other existing organisations with accredited reputation as representatives of target issuer organisations, can be considered based on the learnings from the first phase and the credentials to be issued. For example, these could be other funding providers specialised in supporting Startups, or startup associations such as European Startup Network, Invest Europe IVZW, European BIC Network, or European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

Trusted Issuers

The Trusted Issuer is a role that a Legal Entity might perform by creating a Verifiable Credential, associating it with a specific subject, and transmitting it to a holder. The Issuer is trusted as it is accredited by a TAO, the accreditation is stored on the ledger and can be verified later. Issuers could include governments, businesses, non-profit organisations, trade associations. In the first phase of the OnePass project, the issuers will be the FundingBox and BIA as entities specialised in carrying out KYC, KYB and VRM type of procedures as part of their business-as-usual activities of public funding distribution. The purpose of this is to test and showcase the entire process, ensuring compatibility with EBSI. Following the learnings from phase 1, the trusted framework will be opened to allow other issuers to be able to join the programme. For example, these trusted issuers could be accelerators and Business Incubator Centers fulfilling the accreditation criteria, established by the TAO, to be registered as Trusted issuers.

Holders of Credentials

The holder of a Verifiable Credential sits at the centre of a triangle of trust, mediating between issuer and verifier. The issuer and holder trust each other, the holder trusts the verifier, and the verifier trusts the issuer. Any role in the triangle can be played by a person, an institution, or an IoT-device. The holder of the Verifiable Credential, issued by the issuer, is most often an individual, but it can also be an organisation. He is the sole owner of the issued Verifiable Credential, and has full control over its handling, use and verification. Within the OnePass use case, the holder will be an SME. In the first phase of the project implementation, we will focus on early stage startups as a holder and in later stages, we will broaden the range to also include SMEs in more mature stages.

Trusted Verifiers

It is a role an entity performs by receiving one or more Verifiable Credentials, optionally inside a verifiable presentation, for processing. For example, in the OnePass use case, the Trusted issuer can be an investor or a public funding donor who will verify the legal existence of an SME based on the credential shared by the SME (holder).