As Dock continues with its mission to replace the centralized platforms that keep control and silo the credential data of institutions and users, we remain laser focussed in utilizing existing and open standards. Using standards ensures that our technology is an enabler for our users, making Dock interoperable with other standards as opposed to locking them into any particular stack.
Dock has chosen the W3C’s Verifiable Credentials Data Model (VDCM) - a standard born out of a work of a diverse international community of experts and by an organization which has been at the forefront of software standards for 30 years. It also happens to be led by the inventor of the WorldWideWeb, Sir Tim Berners Lee.
So, as we make our universal credential verifier available it is, of course, compatible with W3C’s VDCM standard and we believe the first of its kind. The verifier is available here and you can either drag and drop a JSON file into the verifier or you can select one via your file browser by clicking on ‘Choose JSON file’. The JSON files can be used to represent any form of claims including (but not limited to): academic achievement, licenses, identity...etc... across multiple industry sectors. These credentials are signed cryptographically by the issuer which serves to confirm their authenticity and in future can be anchored in the Dock blockchain to confirm time and date of issuance.
The verifier is free to use and as it’s from Dock it’s open-source. Now, any recipients of any VCDM-compliant credentials can use this verifier and be 100% confident that their credentials are verifiable.
Verifiable credentials will play a large role in many aspects of our lives in the future and we hope that this verifier, and the visual evidence it provides, serves to demonstrate the value of this technology moving forward.
