Case study

eSSIF-Lab

It aims to advance the broad uptake of Self-Sovereign Identities (SSI) as a next-generation, open and trusted digital identity solution. 

Visit eSSIF-Lab

Visit the eSSIF-Lab website in order to learn more about the project.

What is eSSIF-Lab?

eSSIF-Lab is an EU-funded project and aims at advancing the broad uptake of Self-Sovereign Identities (SSI) as a next generation, open and trusted digital identity solution for faster and safer electronic transactions via the Internet and in real life.

Do you think you can contribute? eSSIF-Lab will distribute up to 5.6 M€ among 62 projects that will be selected through 3 open calls:

  • one infrastructure-oriented open call targeting (20) open source technical enhancements and extensions of our SSI framework, and
  • two business-oriented open calls targeting (42) commercial competitive SSI components and services.

About OnboardSSI

The concept of SSI was designed with the citizen and privacy in mind. However, existing implementations lack user-friendliness (e.g. showing hash codes to users), creating potential barriers to users’ adoption. OnboardSSI focuses on providing a secure and user-friendly wallet solution creating an easier way for citizens to manage their identity. OnboardSSI will leverage AI to remotely verify users’ identity, without human validator intervention, and create verifiable credentials. End-users will perform a 3-step identity verification including scanning of proof-of-identity (e.g. passport), person cross-checks through liveness detection, facial matching, and document validation, reaching High Level of Assurance based on eIDAS regulation. OnboardSSI will provide the appropriate abstraction for citizens to easily manage their credentials.

Benefits

Identity fraud is a huge growing problem that is destroying the trust of people on the Internet. OnboardSSI constitutes an important solution for the realisation of NGI vision, reducing identity fraud and improving user experience. OnboardSSI will facilitate the adoption of SSI, facilitate user onboarding to SSI and create a more user-friendly way to manage the identity. Providing strong identity verification through AI and SSI is a significant step toward the NGI vision.

OnboardSSI facilitates and empowers key values of NGI such as

  • Data protection and Privacy as users have full control over their data, which are encrypted, anonymised and processed on the device,
  • Transparency as the component is fully transparent about the data collected and how they are processed,
  • Interoperability through the use of Open APIs and
  • Openness as the component is offered with Apache 2.0 licence.

OnboardSSI is fully aligned with the NGI vision in creating a more human-centric Internet.

Relevance to SSI

OnboardSSI will provide a secure and user-friendly mobile wallet that allows

  1. seamless onboarding for users,
  2. easy creation of verifiable credentials from existing identity documents such as passports,
  3. secure storage of verifiable credentials through strong encryption,
  4. appropriate abstraction for user-friendly management of the verifiable credentials even by non-technical people and
  5. highly secure access control for the wallet through AI-powered continuous behavioural authentication.

This project has received cascading funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871932.