Blog

Here we will present a monthly blog by one of our experts that will give you more insight into blockchains and the way TNO is working on this technology.

SSI and Guardianship - A New Credential Type (1/3); September 2021

We all know that carrying out business transactions online can be a real pain, especially to those who receive help in an offline world. In this blog we will share the benefits that emerging SSI technologies...

SSI and Guardianship - A practical Experiment (2/3); September 2021

To accommodate guardianship needs in the context of online business transactions, the use of a guardianship verifiable credential is suggested. To determine the practicality of this credential, we did...

SSI and Guardianship - What's Next? The Assurance Community (3/3); September 2021

In the previous blog we explained that while guardianship credentials as proposed in the Sovrin whitepaper can be constructed relatively easily, there are concerns about their applicability in practice....

Self-Sovereign Assets; July 2021

Roads and roadblocks towards supporting digital assets in an SSI context Both industry and governmental agencies are working on infrastructure that handles digital assets. Real life assets can be managed...

Self-Sovereign Communication; April 2021

Presentation, verification and storage of identity information remains a challenge in today’s digital infrastructure. Even today, we are often requested to scan our passports and send them over a barely...

Verify the Verifier - Anti-coercion by Design; October 2020

This position statement argues that we need countermeasures against coercion of verifiable credentials, especially COVID-19 credentials. We propose an initial set of countermeasures, which are an amalgamation...

A Proof-of-Customer model for public permissioned blockchains; July 2020

This blog proposes a Proof-of-Customer model for public permissioned blockchains, like Sovrin and Ripple. This is an economic incentive model for validators, similar to the Proof-of-Work incentives for...

Four lessons on guardianship with Self-Sovereign Identity; March 2020

This blog discusses the concept of “guardianship” in the context of self-sovereign identity (SSI). Whereas SSI emphasizes the self-sovereignty of persons, there are many use cases where a person is unable...

Future-proofing smart contract governance using governor bootstrapping; March 2020

Smart contract governance? This blog proposes a governor bootstrapping design pattern for smart contract governance, which makes it possible to future-proof smart contracts from the get-go. We also provide...

Self-Sovereign Identity - the good, the bad and the ugly; May 2019

Self-sovereign identity (SSI) promises to empower citizens with new means to manage privacy, elimination of logins, and much faster transactions via the internet as well as in real life. SSI promises to...

Information Centric Networking and Blockchain; April 2019

Blockchains or blockchain technology (BCT) are technologies based on peer-to-peer cryptographic functions in a fully distributed architecture. The scalability of blockchains is threatened by the suboptimality...

A wholesale model for permissioned blockchains; September 2018

Whereas the business model for validators (‘miners’) is clear in unpermissioned blockchains, it is less obvious in permissioned blockchains. A viable business model should have economic incentives for...

The Blockchain Business Case; August 2018

Proposals to implement blockchain as a replacement for existing approaches to exchange data are often accompanied by promises of significant technological, legal and organisational improvements. But do...

Self-Sovereign Identities: It Is Going To Happen!; May 2018

The term ‘Self-Sovereign Identity’ (SSId) has been attracting quite some attention in the (relatively small) world of ‘Internet-and-Identity’, with initiatives such as Sovrin and uPort as examples (and,...

Will that smart contract really do what you expect it to do?; March 2018

Much of the excitement and hype surrounding blockchain technology revolves around the promise of co-called smart contracts. Their immutability is what makes the concept of smart contracts so powerful,...

Stichting Consortium Blockchain Nederland: Towards a Dutch public blockchain facility; March 2018

Blockchains are expected to be beneficial to Dutch business and government. This whitepaper argues that there is an opportunity for a Dutch public blockchain facility, possibly organised through a Dutch...

Lightning Network for Dummies; December 2017

The elevator pitch of Lightning Network is “faster and cheaper bitcoin transactions”. As many know, the bitcoin network is regularly reaching its capacity, resulting in excessive transaction fees (many...