The Sovrin Foundation launches the Sovrin Alliance—a global collaborative for developing digital identity


CULedger, Desert Financial Credit Union, globaliD, IBM, Irish Life, and Unveil.Social become sponsors of the Sovrin Alliance with donation to the largest community of self-sovereign identity developers and projects in the world

SALT LAKE CITY, March 27, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Sovrin Foundation today announced the launch of the Sovrin Alliance—which aims to become the world’s leading destination for self-sovereign identity (SSI) education and collaboration.

CULedger, Desert Financial Credit Union, globaliD, IBM, Irish Life, and Unveil.Social have joined the Sovrin Alliance as founding sponsors. Overall, the Alliance is made up of four sponsorship tiers: SSI Leader, SSI Innovator, SSI Trailblazer, and SSI Advocate. IBM joined the Alliance as an SSI Leader, the premier sponsorship tier. As an SSI Leader, IBM will help provide support for creating and operating the Alliance. Desert Financial Credit Union has joined the Alliance as a SSI Trailblazer, and CULedger, globaliD, Irish Life, and Unveil.Social have joined as SSI Advocates.

“Self-sovereign identity was created by a community of people who want to solve the internet’s identity problem by giving people control of their identities,” said Heather Dahl, Executive Director & CEO of the Sovrin Foundation. “To make this a global reality, we need to build a global community. The Sovrin Alliance will do this by providing the space for people to learn about and collaborate on SSI at all levels of experience.”

“If we want the Sovrin Network to grow, we need a space where developers, enterprises, NGOs, governments, and others can work together on SSI implementations and projects,” said Dahl.

The Sovrin Alliance will shape the future of SSI and the Sovrin Network as it will be the place where organizations from around the world can learn, connect, share, develop, and create interoperability. Members of the Alliance will ensure that the standards being discussed are as compatible as possible and the principles and values of the Sovrin Network are preserved. Moreover, the Sovrin Alliance seeks to increase overall awareness of the groundbreaking benefits of SSI technology both inside and outside the developer community.  

IBM has been an early and substantive supporter of the Sovrin Network since 2018, providing both committee volunteers and coding capability toward furthering Sovrin Foundation’s mission to make self-sovereign identity a reality. With its contributions to the Sovrin Alliance, IBM has helped ensure the Sovrin Foundation can continue to evangelize and operationalize its digital identity platform.

“The Sovrin Network provides a new global governance framework that will drive greater interoperability and a new trust model for securely sharing private information. This goal is only possible through broad community-wide support from diverse organizations supporting the vision of self-sovereign identity,” said Adam Gunther, Director, IBM Blockchain Trusted Identity and Network Services. “We feel strongly about advancing this approach, scaling the technology and are eager to welcome other members to help drive global adoption of this important initiative.”

Members of the Alliance will be able to receive the technical and educational resources they need for their SSI-related pilots, POCs, and use cases while working alongside the world’s leading SSI advocates. The Alliance will also sponsor digital identity events, an SSI certificate program, custom virtual workshops, technical consulting appointments, and opportunities to showcase projects.

“The success of the Sovrin Alliance is central to the success of the Sovrin Network,” said Phil Windley, Chair of the Sovrin Foundation. “Building a self-sovereign identity system that is usable by everyone requires the community to come together by joining the Alliance to further the development of the ideas and technologies that will achieve the goal of providing identity for all.”

The Sovrin Foundation is grateful to IBM, CULedger, Desert Financial Credit Union, globaliD, Irish Life, and Unveil.Social for choosing to become founding sponsors of the Sovrin Alliance. The Foundation encourages all who are passionate and interested in solving the identity problems associated with internet commerce in a privacy and humanity preserving way to join IBM and the rest of the Sovrin Alliance in advancing the SSI movement. For more information about the Alliance or to get updates on upcoming Alliance events, visit the Sovrin Foundation website or email info@ sovrin.org.

ABOUT THE SOVRIN FOUNDATION

The Sovrin Foundation is a nonprofit organization established to administer the Governance Framework governing the Sovrin Network, a decentralized global public network enabling self-sovereign identity on the internet. The Sovrin Network is an open source project operated by independent Stewards and uses the power of a distributed ledger to give every person, organization, and thing the ability to own and control their own permanent digital identity.

Helen Garneau
Sovrin.org Director of Marketing
Helen@Sovrin.org 
Phone Number: +1 801 701-1848