Identity management and digital certs

[martinhalford]

Discussion 🗣

The issue of identity management and digital certificates were raised recently.
Details can be found here: Cicero Issue #562

TL;DR

There's currently no way to sign an Accord Contract. The assertion is that there should.

Context

All other contract platforms (e.g. DocuSign, Adobe Sign, HelloSign, etc.) have contract signing as a means to confirm all parties have agreed to the terms of the agreement.

Keerthi Thomas recently presented ideas on how identity might be integrated into Accord for digital signing of agreements stored in DLTs.

This could be a "Lab" candidate - under the Apache definition as there is no existing codebase.

[jolanglinais]

Not having this as a part of Accord Project technology seems like a strange omission, and I'm all for us steering in this direction.

[jeromesimeon]

Possibly related issues:

• Document/File format for Accord Project contracts Document format for Accord Project contracts template-archive#562
• Support for custom resources in Accord Project templates / contracts Support for Custom Resources template-archive#598
• Signed templates: Signed Cicero Template Archives template-archive#262 (With corresponding PR at feat(archive): add signing support (#262) template-archive#496)
• Digital signatures: Identity management and digital signatures template-archive#558

[martinhalford]

As per the recent TSC meeting, general plan is to focus on instantiation of an Accord Project contract instance first and then layer digital sigs, digital authorisation on top once instances are in place.

[martinhalford]

From TSC Meeting: 30-Sep-2021

• Recent work by Sanket on digitally signing templates and contract instances is moving AP in this direction.
• No current obvious digital identity standard or service to integrate with.
• Current strategy is to follow through with the work Sanket is doing on SLC file format and signing SLC instances, and then (potentially) augment with digital identity service(s) as the need/requirement arises.
• (Teaser: Niall may have a use case starting shortly, based on NFTs.)