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# Gordian Seal Overview

## Short Label for Products with the 2021 Gordian Seal of Approval

The 2021 Gordian Seal of Approval certifies that Blockchain Commons has professionally assessed that [product] meets Gordian’s core principles and offers four key assurances:

- **Independence.** Control and recovery of assets is independent of centralized authorities and gatekeepers.
- **Privacy.** Transactions are private and correlation is minimized.
- **Resilience.** Assets are free from single points of failure or compromise.
- **Openness.** Systems are interoperable and free from vendor lock-in.

For more information on Gordian and its principles, please visit [Blockchain Commons](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Gordian/tree/master/Docs/What-is-Gordian.md).

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# What is Gordian?

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Gordian offers a new approach to managing digital assets based on a set of principles and best practices that put the user first. It enhances independence and resilience by granting users the ability to robustly control their own digital assets using responsible key management and creates openness so that users won't be locked into anyone else's system. 

## Why Gordian?

Professional digital-asset wallets have tended to move away from the founding principles of Bitcoin by locking users into centralized authorities who control a user's access to the network and who also are vulnerable to internal or network attacks. Personal solutions that avoided these issues tended to be vulnerable to key loss. 

Gordian cuts through this knotty problem by providing users with secure, usable mobile platforms for managing their digital assets while still maintaining security and resilience. In doing so, it offers a new approach to managing digital assets of all kinds.

## What is the Gordian Seal of Approval?

The Gordian Seal of Approval verifies that Blockchain Commons has professionally certified that a Bitcoin wallet (or other digital-asset wallet) meets Gordian's core principles and industry best practices.

Because best practices are constantly evolving, each Gordian Seal of Approval is tagged with a year: the 2021 Gordian Seal of Approval certifies that a wallet meets the best practices that Blockchain Commons requires for 2021.

Any company applying for a Gordian Seal of Approval must also affirmatively declare that they agree to [Blockchain Commons' Code of Ethics](https://hackmd.io/SJbeoXaFScmGM4_-AmNZeQ). Violation of that Code can result in the loss of a company's right to use the Gordian Seal.

[Apply for a Gordian Seal of Approval.](TBD)

## What are the Gordian Principles?

Gordian-approved wallets are built to support the Gordian principles for personal independence, asset resilience, and open infrastructure. They're intended to protect not just funds, but people.

* **Independence.** Gordian improves user freedom from involuntary oversight or external control.
  * **Agency.** Users should be able to control, audit, and selectively reveal their own finances. 
  * **Autonomy.** Users should be independent of centralized authorities and gatekeepers.
  * **Coercion Resistance.** Users should be protected from coercion thanks to non-correlation, privacy, and pseudonymity.
* **Resilience.** Gordian protects users to decrease the likelihood of them losing their funds via any means.
  * **Reliability.** Gordian applications should protect users from accidentally losing their funds due to mistakes, single points of failure, or other problems.
  * **Security.** Gordian applications should protect users from losing their funds due to single points of compromise or theft.
  * **Survivability.** Gordian applications should protect users from losing their funds due to the obsolescence of a single Gordian-approved product or service.
* **Openness.** Gordian supports open infrastructure that allows developers to create their own applications.
  * **Competitiveness.** Gordian applications should work together in a cooperative ecosystem, even though they are created competively.
  * **Interoperability.** Gordian applications should coordinate using standardized specifications and interfaces and should be free of any operational, licensing, or patent lock-in.
  * **Sustainability.** Gordian applications should be supportable into the far future.

The Gordian principles enable users to choose how to control their money, using the best applications possible.

Blockchain Commons [publishes requirements and offers a reference architecture](https://hackmd.io/565pls38QLGKn-HG7kv47g) that can be used to achieve these principles. Developers may wish to read these [specific and technical details](https://hackmd.io/565pls38QLGKn-HG7kv47g).
 
## Why Blockchain Commons?

Blockchain Commons is a trusted organization able to offer the Gordian Seal of Approval because of its decades of security experience combined with a focus on user privacy.

Blockchain Commons was founded by Christopher Allen, the co-author of the IETF TLS protocol that is today used to secure most web sites on the internet, including financial operations from banking to e-commerce. He is also the co-author of the [W3C DID standard](https://www.w3.org/2019/did-wg/PublStatus) for decentralized identity, which is now in [CR (Candidate Recommendation) stage](https://www.w3.org/2020/Process-20200915/#transition-cr). Together these two standards span 20 years of security and privacy experience, which has also included work with Blockstream, Certicom, and Blackphone.

Christopher Allen is also the author of ["The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity"](http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2016/04/the-path-to-self-soverereign-identity.html) and the founder of the [Rebooting the Web of Trust design workshops](https://www.weboftrust.info/), which have been running since 2016. He has been advancing the case for user privacy and agency for half-a-decade, and now brings this user-focused perspective to Blockchain Commons.

Blockchain Commons began its work on cryptocurrency best-practices in 2019, with the publication of [#SmartCustody](https://www.smartcustody.com/), by Christopher Allen and Shannon Appelcline, which contained cryptocurrency best practices for 2020. The Gordian Seal of Approval program expands that experience and expertise.

But Blockchain Commons is more than just a single person. Christopher Allen is leading a team of experts in the field and has also collected together the expertise of many wallet manufacturers in Blockchain Commons' [Airgapped Wallet Community](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/Airgapped-Wallet-Community); they've been working together since 2019 to develop many of the best practices and interoperable specifications that are now represented by the Gordian Seal.

This combination of expertise, along with Blockchain Commons' not-for-profit benefit-corporation status and its membership in [COPA](https://www.opencrypto.org/), the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, is why Blockchain Commons is the best organization for understanding and certifying the security and privacy of cryptographic and blockchain services. 

