canis

CANIS

Canis is an extensible credentialing platform providing a configurable, easy to use environment for issuing and verifying credentials that conform with decentralized identity standards including W3C decentralized identifiers (DIDs), W3C DID resolution, and W3C verifiable credentials.

Summary

• Architecture
• Why Canis?
• Roadmap
• Development
• License

Architecture

Canis concerns itself with levels one, two and three of the ToIP technical stack, Hyperledger Indy Node at level one and Hyperledger Aries at levels two and three.

The DIDComm load balancer provides a single entry point into Canis, internally this is a RabbitMQ instance. Incoming DIDComm messages are routed by @type to instances of 'Doorman' (didexchange protocol), 'Issuer' (issue credential protocol) and 'Verifier' (present proof protocol).

Hyperledger Ursa fulfills any cryptographic operations that need to occur in the 'Issuer' or 'Verifier' instances.

'Agents' (we use this term loosely) are created ad-hoc, to fulfil the current incoming DIDComm message. The backing wallet storage required for these agents persists beyond the lifecycle of the current message and is configurable with MongoDB or CouchDB.

Why Canis?

Issuing digital credentials requires an institution or organization to have an agency/agent to represent its interest in the digital landscape. This agent must act as a fiduciary on behalf of the organization, must hold cryptographic keys representing its delegated authority, and it must communicate via DIDComm Protocols.

In addition, needing an agent, organizations need a way to instruct this agent how to issue a credential and to whom. That requires information that is currently stored in legacy (in ToIP terms) systems.

Canis serves as a platform for creating, launching and empowering agents to participate in a credentialing ecosystem on any organization's behalf. In addition, Canis provides an easy to use RESTful API and extensible data model to allow for endorsing agents on behalf of any hierarchy of organizational structure.

Roadmap

1. REST API: Canis can be operated with its RESTful API for maximum flexibility
2. Multiple Wallets: Aries today... who knows tomorrow
3. Multiple DID Resolution: DID resolution can be performed against...
4. Multiple VC Formats: Issue, prove and verify CL, JWT and JSON-LD credentials, even in the same issuance
5. Multiple Ledger Support: Credential issuing on Indy, and then...
6. Plugins: We think the future lays in an extendable architecture for adding functionality to Canis and APIs, we're just starting with the ones we know best
7. CLI: Control your Canis platform from the command line
8. Mailbox: Message routing and storage for agents in support of remote, not-always-on devices

Development

For development and deployment setup, check the dev-setup directory.

License

Copyright 2016-2020 Scoir, Inc.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.