The purpose of this ToIP This ToIP wiki page is to provide a single starting point for anyone who is new to the concept of Trust over IP and who wants to start with a high-level picture of the entire purpose and concept of introduction to the ToIP stack and the ToIP Foundation.
Currently the two best resources for starting this journey are:
- Introduction to ToIP white paper — this was the original white paper published for the launch of the ToIP Foundation in May 2020. It remains the single best overall introduction to the ToIP stack and the ToIP Foundation. This is now being converted into ToIP deliverable WP0010 (#1 in the "Big Four" below).
- The Trust over IP Stack — this is the original Hyperledger Aries RFC that was first published in August 2019 to establish the overall definition of the ToIP stack. Note: even though many of the ideas for the architecture of the ToIP stack originated with Hyperledger Indy, Ursa, and Aries along together with the SSI identity model, the ToIP stack itself is not tied to any specific implementation, and is designed for global interoperability of decentralized digital trust infrastructure just like the TCP/IP stack is designed for global interoperability of data packet exchange regardless of implementation.
The "Big Four" (Second Generation of the "Introduction to ToIP" Document Suite)
In late 2020, the ToIP Foundation identified four deliverables that would collectively take the place of the two documents above. Our goal is to have these four deliverables into public review by the end of Q1 2021. The four documents (and links to their respective Task Forces) are:
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The Introduction to ToIP White Paper
In December 2021, the ToIP Foundation finished a new white paper that provides a complete illustrated introduction to ToIP. We strongly suggest this as the best starting place to become acquainted with the core concepts of ToIP and the mission and work of the ToIP Foundation.
The ToIP Stack
At the very core of ToIP is the ToIP stack—a four-layer model for interoperable decentralized digital trust infrastructure. Below is a static picture of this stack, but the best way to learn about this stack is via this interactive model on the ToIP website.
Evolution of the ToIP Stack
As work on the ToIP stack progressed, in November 2022 the Foundation published a new document called Evolution of the ToIP Stack to provide an overview of the four stages that development is progressing through. We highly recommend this document to put the work of the ToIP Foundation into context.
Design Principles for the ToIP Stack
If you are intrigued by what you have read above, another resource that can help you understand ToIP at a deeper level is the Design Principles for the ToIP Stack. Produced by 22 ToIP Foundation members via a series of community writing workshops held over four months in the fall of 2021, this 58-page document explains the 17 design principles guiding the development of the ToIP stack across all ToIP Foundation working groups and task forces.
Historical Documents
The concept of the ToIP stack originated with ToIP Foundation Executive Director John Jordan and a group of Internet architects who were deeply involved with decentralized digital identity, sometimes called self-sovereign identity or SSI. These architects were convinced that the core concepts of decentralized digital wallets and credentials—and the combination of cryptography and governance that made them work—could be the basis for finally establishing an interoperable trust layer for the Internet that could address longstanding issues in cybersecurity, privacy, data protection, and digital trust. After developing a core design for the ToIP stack, they published an article called The Trust Over IP Stack in the December 2019 special issue of IEEE Communications Standards Magazine called The Dawn of the Internet Identity Layer and the Role of Decentralized Identity.
That article led to the publication of the overall requirements for ToIP in a Hyperledger document called The Trust Over IP Stack. That became the basis for the launch of the ToIP Foundation in May 2020 and the first version of the white paper called Introduction to ToIP, now superseded by Introduction to ToIP V2.0.
The diagram below is a visual depiction of the evolution of the original founding documents into the second generation of foundational documents now being published by the ToIP Foundation.
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