A Year in Review for Impierce Technologies
As the year draws to a close, it’s a perfect time to look back on our accomplishments and advancements at Impierce Technologies. While it might have seemed quiet, with UniMe being the standout release, this past year has marked a tremendously successful journey for us. Let’s take a moment to reflect on 2023 and set our sights on the exciting prospects awaiting us in 2024!
We started 2023 with a one team member, passionately searching for investors and projects to kick-start our development. Throughout the year, we successfully raised €435.000,- through four angel investors. We are thrilled to have found like-minded individuals who believed in our mission, vision and purpose to build accessible self sovereign identity technology and make a positive impact for all stakeholders. This success empowered us to steadily grow the team to now having six talented individuals on our team. As we continue to grow, we remain on the lookout for more passionate individuals to join our team and contribute to making our vision a reality.
OpenID Standards for eIDAS 2.0
In the EU, 2023 marked a significant milestone for identity with the eIDAS 2.0 regulation forming. The regulation underwent multiple iterations and culminated in the release of the final legislation, accompanied by an Architecture Reference Framework (ARF) for Identity Wallets. This led to a clear technical direction for Impierce, which was perfect timing as we had just started our developments. The ARF defines two technical directions with the same purpose. These are the OpenID standards combined with Verifiable Credentials or the ISO 18013–5 Mobile Driver’s License (MDL). Like most EU Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) companies, we opted to start with the OpenID standards.
Within a few short months, we developed one of the leading implementations of the SIOPv2 standard for user authentication, the OpenID4VCI standard for issuing digital certificates, and OpenID4VP for sharing digital certificates. This library is publicly available under the open-source Apache 2.0 license. In 2024, we will extend this library and get it certified by the OpenID Foundation.
UniMe
As the year unfolded, our focus shifted to building an Identity Wallet, UniMe, with the aim of making it the most secure and user-friendly Identity wallet in the market. To achieve this, we collaborated with some amazing partners. For security, we opted to develop the app in the Rust programming language on the highly innovative Tauri framework for desktop and mobile applications. We worked with Crab Nebula to extend the Tauri functionalities for the mobile platform and donated this to the Tauri community.
To achieve the best User Experience, we collaborated with Digital Zen to help design the UniMe app, and we will continue the relationship in 2024. We are very proud of our initial UniMe design and branding, and intend to expand on this significantly in the new year. A great user experience will require much more work and feedback, but we are very happy with the current state of UniMe as a solid foundation for improvement.
Next Generation Digital Identity for Learning (NGDIL)
In September, we released UniMe in beta concurrently with the release of the NGDIL demo in collaboration with Koning Willem I College and Tangle Labs. This project allowed us to showcase Self-Sovereign Identity technology in the educational sector, allowing people to have firsthand experience with its advantages. The demo is already very advanced from a technical perspective as it uses the aforementioned standards. The goal of this project was to inspire others to join in on a (regional) pilot. We have received significant interest from many important stakeholders in the Dutch educational sector. On several events, this project was mentioned as the leading project on my fronts such as eIDAS 2.0 compliance, badging and utilizing SSI technology. We are very much looking forward to a follow-up pilot!
SURF
In recent months, Impierce finalized a Proof-of-Concept in collaboration with SURF, an association comprising over 100 Dutch educational institutions. SURF is dedicated to providing shared software services and driving IT innovation for its members. In this project, Impierce implemented OpenBadges v3.0, a standard which extends the Verifiable Credentials standard, specifically for the educational sector. The badges serve as a conduit for recognizing lifelong learning achievements such as completing courses and acquiring new skills.
Using SSI standards and principles, the results allow students to download and take control over their badges issued on the EduBadges platform from SURF into UniMe. Previously, SURF stored this data on behalf of the students, associating it to their school email. This provided several challenges for SURF and the students in order to use it in a wider and more open environment, especially after graduation.
We proved that existing badges could be issued as OpenBadges v3.0, an updated version of the standard, and be exported to an Identity Wallet such as UniMe using the OpenID standards. A test deployment of the EduBadges platform will have this functionality integrated.
SSI Agent
The final phase of the SURF PoC is to provide the initial Minimum-Viable Product for what we currently call the SSI agent. We are developing a product that any organization can deploy within their own environment, either on-premises or in the cloud. The SSI agent is equipped to handle all SSI tasks, effectively “speaking” all relevant standards, including the OpenID standards and can be called upon with a streamlined API from any environment.
Our goal is to provide a solution that facilitates the seamless integration of SSI into existing organizational processes, while simultaneously ensuring compliance with eIDAS 2.0 standards. The SSI Agent serves as a versatile tool, empowering companies to embark on their SSI journey while adhering to the latest regulatory requirements. Anticipating the integration of our SSI Agent with various systems, our focus for 2024 will revolve around its further development.
IOTA / EBSI
In the early stages of the upcoming year, we are committed to reinstating the IOTA network into our solution stack, likely to be complimented with EBSI (European Blockchain Service Infrastructure, or simply a European Blockchain) later. While our initial integration of IOTA was successful, the Stardust update required us to rethink the approach. Therefore, our current solution supports only non-blockchain solutions.
Despite the likely use of official eIDAS 2.0 regulated identities and credentials on an EBSI network, we recognize the growing demand for a public, permissionless, and lightweight secondary network that aligns with the same standards. While government use cases may require a higher level of security and bureaucratic processes, many other scenarios prefer a streamlined approach. For instance, when an employer issues an employee credential, there may be no need for extensive government registration processes through EBSI.
The current European focus of EBSI and eIDAS 2.0 leaves room for a parallel network that adheres to the same standards but operates with less bureaucracy and in an international scope. IOTA, with its design, identity framework, throughput, and connection to the EBSI-PCP, stands out as an excellent candidate for fulfilling this role.
Furthermore, the product range of Impierce Technologies is dedicated to simplifying and enhancing privacy-preserving data sharing, which is highly in-demand in the cryptocurrency market. By making IOTA a part of our stack, we will continue to commit ourselves to the IOTA community, and interconnect the ecosystem via a fundamental layer of trust.
The Bridge
Last but not least, we developed an OIDC — SIOPv2 bridge. Currently, hundreds of thousands of websites support the OpenID Connect (OIDC) standard from the OpenID Foundation for user authentication. This protocol can easily be identified by the “Login with X” buttons, such as “Login with Google” or “Login with Facebook”. This protocol supports user authentication via a trusted third party which controls the user’s data and can track their browsing activity.
The OpenID Foundation is currently working on SIOPv2, a new standard based on OIDC, which allows direct peer-to-peer user authentication without a trusted third party. This increases privacy, but also will be much more convenient as you can connect it to your personal data collection. As such, whenever a website needs your address, Google can either guess which address is currently relevant (if you move around a lot, or use multiple addresses) in the OIDC standard, while in the SIOPv2 standard the website can simply ask you directly to share your address (and which one). No more endlessly typing your address. Instead you just consent to share.
The downside of adopting SIOPv2 is that it requires the website to integrate a new user authentication mechanism and user management system. The OIDC — SIOPv2 bridge PoC that Impierce has created, shows that we can let websites continue to use OIDC, while our bridging software translated that into SIOPv2 request that can be processed by Identity Wallets such as UniMe. This provides the user with the convenience of SIOPv2, the website with the convenience of OIDC, while the trusted third party is no longer a Big Tech company, but will be a blind participant. This solution will never be as privacy-friendly as SIOPv2, but will hopefully act as an easier to adopt transition.
Looking ahead to 2024
Our first year started out with quite a few unknowns. Looking back, we managed to do much more than we could have imagined. We are therefore very optimistic for 2024! We foresee a year where we make SSI adoption and eIDAS 2.0 compliance significantly easier for all companies. In 2024, we expect a range of proof-of-concepts and experiments to be completed in rapid succession as our infrastructure makes it easier and easier. This will lighten the road towards real-world adoption significantly.
We will mature UniMe, the SSI Agent and the OIDC — SIOPv2 Bridge to 1.0 versions and start integrating them into products. Afterwards, we expect to see the real-world adoption of our technology. For the educational sector, these products enable receiving and storing badges for course completion either at a school, online learning platform or corporate training. Don’t be surprised if our technology also quickly finds its way into other use cases and industries, such as Webshops, Healthcare and Access control.
A huge thanks to our supportive partners, community, investors and most importantly the dedicated Impierce development team for this flying start to Impierce Technologies. Onwards and upwards!
