Gataca helps EBSI define a European self-sovereign identity framework

• EBSI, a European Commission (EC) and European Blockchain Partnership (EBP) initiative, is a blockchain infrastructure to deliver public services in Europe
• One of the first four use cases of EBSI is ESSIF, the European Self-Sovereign Identity Framework
• Gataca, a decentralized digital identity provider, has been chosen to help define the technical architecture for ESSIF

Blockchain in Europe

In early 2018, the EC and Member States saw the great potential of blockchain technologies to deliver high standards for privacy, security, and operational efficiency in the public sector. In April, a declaration was made by 27 EU Member States, Norway, and Liechtenstein to make that vision a reality and founded the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP).

The EBP decided to build a European blockchain infrastructure that could support an increasing number of business applications focused on specific use cases. This blockchain infrastructure was named EBSI (after European Blockchain Services Infrastructure) and consists of a network of nodes operated by the EC and the Member States.

In 2019, 4 initial use cases were defined by the EBP Policy Group:

• Identity (ESSIF): a European Self-Sovereign Identity Framework that allows citizens to create and control their digital identity and securely authenticate with businesses and governments.
• Diplomas: academic certificates issued in a trusted digital format to reduce verification costs and empower citizens with self-management capabilities
• Notarization: automation of notarization events to include trusted digital audit trails and ensure data integrity
• Trusted Tax Data sharing: secured sharing of tax data (e.g. VAT identification numbers) amongst customs and tax authorities

In a little over a year, EBSI has deployed 25 nodes and engaged over 300 participants EU-wide.

European Self-Sovereign Identity Framework (ESSIF) - a use case turned the cornerstone

eIDAS is a European directive that entered into force in 2014 to federate all national digital identity systems so that European citizens could use their eID in all Member States.

While the directive is critical in establishing a pan-European Trust framework for electronic authentication, it fails to cover use cases where additional identity credentials are needed, use cases that involve geographic scopes beyond Europe, and use cases in the private sector.

As such, Self-Sovereign Identity architectures complement eIDAS with credentialing capabilities to securely issue and verify any data about citizens so that data exchanges between governments, businesses, and citizens have the highest degree of quality, trust, and efficiency.

ESSIF soon became a cornerstone of EBSI, as trusted identification is an essential requirement for countless other use cases, and SSI is a suitable platform to issue, distribute and manage other credentials such as academic diplomas, tax identification numbers, and residency cards.

GATACA, a domain expert in SSI

GATACA has been chosen as a domain expert to help define the technical architecture of ESSIF. It is an exciting role that allows us to actively contribute to the future of Europe and the entire SSI community. Our role is to provide SSI domain-specific expertise inputs, define the SSI use cases and contribute to the architecture and data modeling definition.

Gataca Studio is today a fully operational, blockchain-agnostic decentralized digital identity platform.

• Issue your own credentials - Create, validate, and digitally sign identity credentials. You can easily create credential issuance templates to integrate an issuance process into your website or application.
• Authenticate users in just one click - Gataca Studio enables you to quickly create customizable verification templates for onboarding and sign-in processes while reducing personal data stored in your infrastructure.
• Manage identity credentials in one place - Gataca Studio lets you effortlessly manage your company’s issued credentials, their status, and your verified users from one dashboard.