Data Spaces enable different organisations to share data while maintaining control over how and with whom they share it. But for this model to work, there is a fundamental question: how can we know who we are interacting with and whether we can trust that participant?
Digital identity therefore becomes a key element in building data-sharing ecosystems based on trust.
This is precisely one of the issues addressed by the research paper “A blockchain-governed SSI trust architecture for EDC-based federated data spaces”, published in Open Research Europe and co-authored by María Ruiz Molina, Head of Blockchain Strategy & Innovation at DIGITEL TS.
Identity and trust within Data Spaces
In a federated Data Space, identifying participants is not enough. It is also necessary to verify the attributes and permissions they present and to determine whether the entities issuing those credentials are recognised as trusted within the ecosystem.
The research presents an architecture that combines Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), Verifiable Credentials and blockchain technology to establish a model of identity and trust between participants.
In this model, Verifiable Credentials can be used to prove aspects such as ecosystem membership, specific permissions or affiliation with a particular sector. Blockchain, in turn, acts as a shared infrastructure for managing aspects related to trust and governance, such as identity registration, roles and the authorization of certain actions.
In this way, trust does not depend solely on whether an identity or credential is technically valid, but also on who issued it and the conditions established within the ecosystem.
Integrating trust into data exchange
The architecture presented in the research is designed to integrate with any dataspace connector that allows for Indy DID identities, and it has been implemented and tested with Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC), incorporating identity and credential checks at different stages of interaction between connectors.
This makes it possible to apply trust controls to processes such as catalogue access, negotiation or the initiation of a data transfer, taking into account participants’ identities, credentials and the policies in place.
The research therefore shows how digital identity can be integrated into the operation of Data Spaces themselves, helping to advance towards data-sharing models in which trust can be verified and managed between participants.
Identity as a foundation for trusted Data Spaces
The research, co-authored by María Ruiz Molina, Head of Blockchain Strategy & Innovation at DIGITEL TS, addresses one of the key challenges facing Data Spaces: establishing mechanisms to verify who is participating, what they can prove and under what conditions they can access specific data.
This research is directly related to key areas in the development of digital identity for Data Spaces, where trust, Verifiable Credentials and governance play a fundamental role in interactions between organizations.
The full paper, “A blockchain-governed SSI trust architecture for EDC-based federated data spaces”, is published in Open Research Europe, where readers can explore the proposed architecture, its integration with EDC and the research results in greater detail.
