Glossary

This glossary is intended to define important terms in the body of this documentation hub.

• Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA): A US federal law that requires financial institutions to detect and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing activities.

• Credential Verifications: The process by which a verifier checks the authenticity, integrity, and current validity of a digital credential presented by a holder, without assessing the truth of the claims themselves.

• Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO): An organization that operates on a blockchain and is governed by smart contracts and voting systems, without the need for centralized authority or management.

• Decentralized Finance (DeFi): System of financial products built on blockchain technology that aim to provide users with a more open, transparent, and accessible financial system without intermediaries.

• Decentralized File Storage (DFS): A method of storing files across multiple nodes in a decentralized manner to enhance security, redundancy, and accessibility without relying on central servers. Used to store encrypted verifiable credential data with cross-device access capabilities.

• Decentralized identifier (DID): Unique digital identifier that is used to represent a person, organization, or thing in a decentralized digital identity system.

• EU Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA): MiCA is the upcoming regulatory framework by the European Union for cryptocurrencies and related digital assets.

• Financial Action Task Force (FATF): intergovernmental organization that sets international standards for combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and other threats to the integrity of the global financial system.

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): European Union regulation that sets rules for the collection, processing, and storage of personal data.

• Holder: A holder is a party that holds and controls digital assets or credentials.

• Issuer: An issuer is a party that creates and issues digital assets or credentials.

• Identity Layer: The foundational protocol or infrastructure that enables creation, management, and verification of digital identities and credentials in a decentralized ecosystem.

• Identity Oracle: A trusted service or system that provides verified identity information or claims to other systems, serving as a bridge between off-chain identity data and on-chain verification needs.

• Issuance: The process in which an issuer creates and issues a credential to a holder based on specified credential schemas and the holder's raw data.

• Know-Your-Business (KYB): A process in which businesses verify the identity and other relevant information of their partners, suppliers, and other counterparties, to assess the risk of financial crime and ensure compliance with regulations.

• Know-Your-Customer (KYC): A process in which businesses verify the identity and other relevant information of their clients to prevent fraud and money laundering. KYC is used in banking, insurance, and other industries where financial transactions occur.

• Multi-Party-Computing (MPC): A cryptographic protocol that allows multiple parties to securely compute a function on their private inputs, without revealing their inputs to each other. MPC is used for secure data sharing and collaboration, including financial transactions, voting, and data analysis.

• Optical Character Recognition (OCR): A technology that allows machines to recognize and convert scanned images of text into machine-readable text. OCR is used in various applications, such as digitizing printed documents, automating data entry, and improving accessibility for visually impaired individuals.

• Oracle: A trusted third party (or network of third parties) that provides data or information to a blockchain-based system. Oracles are used to enable smart contracts to interact with external data and services.

• Politically Exposed Person (PEP): A person who is or has been entrusted with a prominent public function, such as a government official or a political party member. PEPs are subject to enhanced due diligence and monitoring to prevent corruption and money laundering.

• Privacy Preserved: A principle in digital identity systems that ensures users control their personal data and only disclose minimal necessary information, often using cryptographic techniques like zero-knowledge proofs.

• Raw Data: The original identity information of a holder, including identification document photos, facial photos, and personal details used as input for credential creation.

• Regulator: A government agency or other authority that oversees and enforces regulations and laws related to financial transactions, data privacy, and other areas.

• Schema: The standardized storage format for holder information within a verifiable credential, ensuring consistent data structure for the same type of identity credential.

• Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI): SSI is a decentralized digital identity system that allows individuals to own and control their identity information, without relying on centralized authorities. SSI systems are based on blockchain technology and are designed to be secure, private, and interoperable.

• Single Sign-On (SSO): An authentication process that allows users to access multiple applications with one set of login credentials, improving user experience and security.

• Soulbound Token (SBT): Non-transferable tokens representing a person’s identity using blockchain technology. This could include medical records, work history, and any type of information that makes up a person or entity. The wallets that hold or issue these records are called “Souls.”

• Trusted Execution Environment (TEE): A secure computing environment that protects data and code from unauthorized access, ensuring that sensitive operations like key management remain private and tamper-proof.

• Threshold Signature Scheme (TSS): A cryptographic technique that allows a group of parties to collectively sign a message or transaction, without any one party having complete control or knowledge of the signature. TSS is used for secure and decentralized key management and multi-party authorization.

• Universal Account: A single digital identity or account that can be used across multiple platforms and services, enabling seamless interoperability in decentralized ecosystems.

• US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC): A federal agency responsible for regulating commodity futures, options, and swaps markets in the United States.

• US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): A federal agency responsible for regulating and overseeing the securities industry and protecting investors in the United States.

• Verifiable credential (VC): A digital certificate that contains claims about a person's identity or qualifications, which can be verified by a third party. VCs are used in SSI systems to enable secure and privacy-preserving data sharing and collaboration.

• Verifiable Presentations (VPs): Selectively disclosed claims derived from Verified Credentials.

• Verifier: A party that verifies the authenticity and validity of digital assets or credentials.

• Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs): Entities that provide services related to virtual assets, such as exchanges, custodians, and wallet providers.

• Web3: A term used to describe the third generation of the World Wide Web, which is focused on creating a decentralized and trustless internet using blockchain technology.

• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): An international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth and sustainability of the World Wide Web.

• Zero-Knowledge-Proof (ZKPs): A cryptographic technique that allows one party to prove to another party that a statement is true, without revealing any information beyond the fact that the statement is true. ZKPs are used for secure authentication and data exchange, privacy-preserving transactions, and verifying the integrity of data without exposing it.

• zk-SNARK: A zero-knowledge proof system that allows for the verification of computational integrity without revealing the inputs of the computation.

• zkTLS (Zero-Knowledge Transport Layer Security): The integration of zero-knowledge proofs into the TLS handshake process, enabling secure verification of cryptographic parameters without exposing sensitive data.