[Nfd-dev] VCs vs certificates

[Nikos Fotiou]

Hi,
I attended today's NFD call and I really liked Zhiyi's presentation. There was a discussion about the differences between VCs and certificates so I would like to contribute my 2c.

A first difference is that VCs are using "contexts" which can be viewed as "dictionaries" that describe what claims a VC may contain. There are teams that try to define such "standard dictionaries", for example there is a W3C working group that develops  a dictionary for academic records. This facilitates, among other things, interoperability.

The second difference is Verifiable Presentations (VPs). A property of VPs, which was not mentioned today, is that they may combine different credentials. For example, I can construct a VP that verifies that I am over 18 years old, I have graduated from AUEB, and I have a valid driving license, and all these claims can be derived from three different credentials, issued by thee different issuers. 

Best,
Nikos
--
Nikos Fotiou - http://pages.cs.aueb.gr/~fotiou
Researcher - Mobile Multimedia Laboratory
Athens University of Economics and Business
https://mm.aueb.gr

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