Sovereign ecosystems · 1 of 3
Join or build an ecosystem
Verana is public, permissionless infrastructure: anyone can create their own trust ecosystem, or join the ecosystems they want.
The model
What is an ecosystem?
An ecosystem is a governed list of recognized participants authorized to issue, verify, or hold certain credentials. It publishes a governance framework, defines its credential schemas, and sets who is accredited through a participant tree: the ecosystem is the root and delegates to grantors, who accredit issuers and verifiers, who in turn issue to holders. Permission modes range from fully open to fully governed.
What an ecosystem holdsGovernance framework
EGF · versioned
The Ecosystem Governance Framework and each of its published versions, anchored on the registry.
Credential schemas
what it issues
One or more credential types the ecosystem defines and issues.
Accreditation tree
who may act
Grantors, issuers, verifiers and holders: exactly the tree below, recorded on the public registry.
Built-in business model
fees + trust deposits
Fees on trust operations flow up the tree; trust deposits give every participant skin in the game.
Each participant in the tree can charge fees, paid using the network and distributed up the tree to the accrediting participants:
Onboarding and accreditation
per validity period · renewable
An applicant pays a validation fee to be accredited as an issuer, verifier, or grantor. Renewable each validity period.
Pay-per-issuance
per credential issued
An issuer pays a fee each time it issues a credential of a schema.
Pay-per-verification
per credential verified
A verifier pays a fee each time it verifies a credential, shared with the issuer and the rest of the tree.
Skin in the game, earned not bought
A fraction of every paid trust operation is committed to the participant's trust deposit as Trust Units (TU), and the deposit balance is the trust score.
There is no path in for capital: TU cannot be bought or transferred, only earned through real usage. On misbehavior, a network or ecosystem authority destroys TU, and while a slash is unrepaid the participant's permissions are non-trustable. Relying parties and the Trust Graph rank and filter by trust score and slashing history.
The identity baseline
The ECS Ecosystem
The ECS Ecosystem is the shared identity baseline of Verana. It publishes the Essential Credential Schemas (ECS), the small set of credentials that every other ecosystem relies on to identify and mutually verify the parties of an interaction. It is governed by the Verana Council, a neutral, non-profit Swiss association that governs and secures the live network, and the ECS Ecosystem. On top of this baseline, each ecosystem defines its own domain credentials (govID, diploma, reusable KYC, machine certificate, and more).
The five ECS cover three roles: the owner or operator behind a service, the actor itself, and the user-agent software a person connects with.
ECS-Organization
Identifies a legal organization that operates one or more verifiable services.
ECS-Persona
Identifies an individual, a human-controlled avatar, that operates one or more verifiable services.
ECS-Service
Identifies a service, an AI agent, a connected object, and more: the actor that acts on the network. The service's controller is the issuer of the credential.
ECS-Badge
Identifies a human actor. Held by a person and issued by a verifiable service, it carries the human's identity and attributes. The holder usually represents an employee of the organization that issued it.
ECS-UserAgent
Identifies the software a person operates (app, wallet, or browser). Its controller, the software product line, is the issuer of the credential.
Two worked examples
Corporations join, and governments build
A corporation registers itself in Verana, then relates to the registry in two complementary ways, and most participants do both: join any number of ecosystems as an accredited issuer, verifier, or holder, and control any number of its own. Explore both patterns: Acme Corp joins the ECS identity baseline and an ISO certification ecosystem; the Republic of Utopia builds a GovID ecosystem of its own.
A corporation that joins ecosystems: the ECS Ecosystem identifies everyone, and an ISO certification ecosystem adds a provable domain claim on top. Click any node or edge, or use the arrows for the guided tour.
Verifiable identity