Together we're building a new identity ecosystem
Join us in developing the foundational components of an open, standards-based, decentralized identity ecosystem for people, organizations, apps, and devices.
DIF Monthly Newsletter
Our Focus
DIF is an engineering-driven organization focused on developing the foundational elements necessary to establish an open ecosystem for decentralized identity and ensure interop between all participants.
Technical Specifications
Groups in DIF develop specifications and emerging standards for protocols, components, and data formats that implementers can execute against.
Reference Implementations
Beyond specifications, DIF members develop open source reference implementations of the technical components and protocols they create.
Industry Coordination
As the leading industry organization in the Decentralized Identity space, DIF seeks to align industry participants to advance their common interests.
Working Groups
As an engineering-driven development-focused organization, our Working Groups are at the core of everything we do. Our Working Groups are scoped by functional areas, and are designed to drive emerging standard specifications backed up by open source code.
Identifiers and Discovery
A key piece of the decentralized identity equation is how people, organizations, and devices can be identified and located without centralized systems of identifiers (e.g. email addresses). DIF members are actively working on protocols and implementations that enable creation, resolution, and discovery of decentralized identifiers and names across decentralized systems, like blockchains and distributed ledgers.
Learn MoreAuthentication
Designing and implementing DID-based authentication specs, standards, and libraries used in authenticating DIDs across a wide variety of exchanges and use cases.
Learn MoreClaims and Credentials
The ability to verify the claims and assertions of identities is key in establishing trust among entities on a decentralized system that lacks a centralized hierarchy. DIF has recently begun work on defining the specs, protocols, and tools it can provide to the ecosystem to help ecosystem participants and their customers easily integrate DID-signed claims into their apps and services.
Learn MoreDID Communication
Produce one or more high-quality specs that embody a method (“DIDComm”) for secure, private and (where applicable) authenticated message-based communication, where trust is rooted in DIDs and depends on the messages themselves, not on the external properties of the transport(s) used.
Learn MoreSidetree Development & Operating Group
The development and maintenance of the formal Sidetree specification, and a hub of coordination for Sidetree-based DID Method node operators. This group also generates libraries, tooling, and documentation to aid Sidetree-based DID Method node operators.
Learn MoreSecure Data Storage
Create one or more specifications to establish a foundational layer for secure data storage (including personal data), specifically data models for storage and transport, syntax, data at rest protection, CRUD API, access control, synchronization, and at least a minimum viable HTTP-based interface compatible with W3C DIDs/VCs.
Learn MoreMembers
DIF represents a diverse, international collection of organizations and contributors working together to establish an open ecosystem of decentralized identity that is accessible to all.
News & Insights
News about our work and insights from our members on their efforts to build the decentralized identity ecosystem.
Get In Touch
If you're an organization interested in developing industry standards and open source technical components with us fill out this form and we will send you the membership information via email
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