Ahau
AtalaPrism
Our context as a 'collective of collectives' is important for understanding our answers:
Āhau is (p2p), like a federated system. Clusters of peers making up communities at different scales (p4p).
Common scales of organising in Te Ao Māori (the Māori world):
Here are some ways we think groups may use Verifiable Credentials (VCs):
We are early in the process of establishing which hypothesised use-cases will be the most valuable.
It is still early in the life of Ahau too - communities are still discovering the tools, transitioning traditional identity and governance methods to the digital realm and organising around how they use it, so we're not yet sure what the predominant uses will look like in the long run.
Some early work as part of the TribalDIDs project (useful for context: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMXMGrAo=/)
Āhau is local-first software
Ahau is currently preparing for the deployment of Ahau mobile designed for tribal members, with Digital Identity available as a beta service. The different tribal groups currently using Ahau vary widely in "membership" (from 500 - 50,000) so these figure could change drastically should a tribe (new or current) decide to fully deploy digital identity to support membership operations.
The current estmations have been made based on one of our tribal partners and current digital identity project partner.
For groups that want to issue credentials, there will be ≥ 1 issuers. Most likely 2-8.
We don't know how many groups will want VCs yet.
This will depend heavily on the UX/UI, co-design, what needs it is able to serve, how people react to the dynamics of it, and how hard it is to set up (including the CDD processes / automoation of same).
The current setup of AtalaPrism will require them each to run a server, or find collection of groups with enough shared trust that they could set-up multi-tenancy.
For every group that issues VCs, every member will be a holder.
A group might be 150 to 5000 people.
We imagine that groups that do use VCs, they will likely be larger (as there will be some overhead estabilishing accreditation with identity verifiers and Banks/ Government etc. Cost of running infrastructure will be key determiner.
Initial 2-8 verifiers as apart of the pilot project.
There will be as many potential verifiers as there are groups
When a person joins a group, they will automatically be issued (and automatically accept a membership VC). This works because we already have a "registration" process for groups (more like "understanding deeply how / whether you're related" to strengthen relationships, demonstrate whakapapa / connection to land / group affected by theft of whenua. There will be many more groups who will be doing something like KYC (Iwi and Trusts particularly).
Please see this diagram for more information
Each time:
Not that we think at this stage, but could be in the future as the credential schema adapts.
Many holders will connect / whakapapa to multiple different whānau (families), hapū or iwi. This may require credentials to be 'reissued' to include multiple connections that have been updated based on one holders whakapapa (particularly as adoption grows)
Not for our intial deployment, but possible to handle future use cases.
Likely that for a whanau / hapū group that sets itself up as a VC issuer, then the issuance will be happening one at a time, at the speed that a human can approve registrations. This could be registration approved (1 VC issued) per day, or if the person has researched / corroborated 20 people they may want to "bulk issue" for those 20 … or wait veeeeeryyy patiently for our automated process to run it's course (the mediator is slow)
In the case that a group of 1000 people retrospectively decides to be a VC issuer, we may need to be able to issue 1000 VCs within a reasonably time-frame. People are patient, but if it's slow (1 issue at a time), then that means we have to build more crash-resistence, which is costly (engineer time, maintenance).
Examples:
Whānau / Hapū / Iwi have a reunion, this could be a situation of bulk issuance of <1000 VCs being issued.
Groups operating economic centres with existing shareholder registries which relate to connections with whenua (land blocks) and cross many hapū (but don't necessarily include all members of a hapū) will likely bulk register at AGM-like hui (meetings). Bulk issuance of >1000 VCs.
I apply to join a group, and as part of my registration present my VC from another group which may recognise it.
Have already listed the possible entities we think could be "groups".
At least once per holder, our current use case is supporting sub-tribes to provide proof of with membership entitlement for the "parent-tribe".
Past this, we believe it will be more depending on the different services that incorporate this. Use cases will include gaining access to 'resourses' of many different kinds. Data, information, knowledge… could be in the form of art, live biodiversity data…
It is highly likely yes.
However, we don't know yet until people use the system.
Our prototype is currently a claim which is something like:
Yes to "basic details" - we're starting simple. We don't know what richness / more complexity could offer us yet. Honestly we've been focusing on getting the data flowing. The content hasn't had much exploration yet.
Not yet. We can imagine wanting that, but again we'll know more once communities use it and start imagining and requesting new functionality. We think even basic functionality could be hugely transformative though - Indigenous Infrastructure which interoperates with Aotearoa's current institutions, helping grow the Māori Economy.
We don't know yet. Likely use cases will become more complex as use cases expand, regenerative finance and multi-capital accounting is developed further with partners in our ecosystem
Shared membership
People who are holding an issued credential by a recognised/trusted tribe, are also entitled as members of another tribe
Technically this is required as apart of the New Zealand governement digital identity trust framework. If use cases develop with government requiring the framework adoption (which is our intention).
So yes, likely, but still to be explored.
Likely but still to be explored by our team.
We will attempt to add more here in the coming weeks.