Requirements Engineering for Decentralized Identity

Create new markets, remove regulatory risk, and accelerate time to profit with better, more complete, and more resilient identity requirements based on real human needs.

Decentralized Identity accelerates organizational identity, empowering identity-responsive services, advanced capabilities, and enhanced security.

We accelerate decentralized identity.

Threat Modeling

Our identity-focused threat modeling helps both organizations and standards groups evaluate, understand, and document the most relevant security and privacy threats to any information system or specification.

Identity Impact Assessment

Get immediate perspective on current or planned identity integrations through an accelerated investigation into how your system recognizes, remembers, and responds to specific individuals and organizations.

Requirements

Our proven “Just Enough Just-in-Time” process leads your team through a human-focused distillation of the most important identity requirements for your platform.

Standards Leadership

We help create and advance global standards at the World Wide Web Consortium and Conexxus.

Rubrics

We help implementers evaluate decentralized technologies for adoption, including DID Methods using the DID Method rubric (https://w3.org/TR/did-rubric).

We Help Pioneers in Digital Identity Get it Right

Legendary Requirements helped create Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials at the World Wide Web Consortium.
Now we help innovators put them to work.

Decentralized Identity Changes IT

New technologies enable new patterns.

  • Open, reliable, and cost-effective identity for people and organizations
  • Issue and consume digital credentials without relying on central providers
  • Powering real-world use cases like driver’s licenses, age verification, and education credentials.

The Innovation Challenge

Innovation creates complexity.

  • Constantly shifting standards: CHAPI, VC-API, DC-API, MDL
  • Competing credential formats: SD-JWT, Data Integrity VCs, ISO mdoc
  • Evolving cryptosuites: ECDSA, BBS, RSA
  • Regulatory changes across jurisdictions

Complexity Slows You Down

Failed pilots and overhyped promises waste time. We cut through the noise so your team knows:

  • Which standards matter most
  • What tradeoffs affect your roadmap
  • How to avoid rework and false start

Move Faster by Starting Smarter

Fast-moving innovators need clarity, not clutter. We help you:

  • Navigate complex tradeoffs with confidence
  • Align tech decisions with product-market fit
  • Accelerate delivery without breaking what matters

The Future Is Coming—Are You Ready?

Decentralized identity isn’t a question of if, but when. We make sure you’re prepared to seize the opportunity.

Success Stories

IXO World

Working with our client, Ixo World (https://www.ixo.world/), we helped define a novel DID method based on the Cosmos blockchain SDK, did:cosmos (https://github.com/EarthProgram/did-cosmos).

Digital Contract Design

On behalf of our client, Digital Contract Design (https://contract.design/), we helped define the next generation bitcoin DID method did:btcr2.

Applied Physics Laboratory

For Scott David of University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory we developed a technology rubric for individual U.S. states to evaluate technologies for contact tracing and exposure notification.

Digital Bazaar

Working with our client, Digital Bazaar (https://digitalbazaar.com), we helped define and maintain the requirements for a nationwide privacy-preserving platform for age verification system for the convenience-store industry. https://www.mytruage.org/

Legendary Requirements

The Only Requirements Engineering Firm Focused on Decentralized Identity

We help companies build smarter identity platforms by aligning human needs, business goals, and technical opportunities.

Why It Matters

  • Identity systems succeed or fail based on how well they meet real human requirements.
  • We bridge business aspirations with technical realities so development moves faster, with fewer risks.
  • Teams gain clarity on the tradeoffs that can make—or break—success.

Our Credibility

We don’t just consult on decentralized identity—we helped create it.

  • Defined Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs) at W3C
  • Created the DID Method Rubric and edited key W3C use case documents
  • Leadership roles in Credentials Community Group, DID Working Group, and Digital Wallet Working Group (Conexxus)

Our Advantage

Proven engineers. Standards leaders. Decentralized identity innovators.
We’ve built the foundations of this technology—now we help you apply it effectively.

Functional Privacy

A focus on recognition, memory, and response, reduces uncertainty, improves regulatory compliance, and improves the privacy of individual users. https://functionalprivacy.org

Identity Crisis

Fundamentally, every time you recognized something or someone, you are correlating them with the same thing or someone from another context: “all of the varied understandings of the word identity depend on correlation.”

Joram

Consider the experience of a fictional hero, Joram, as decentralized identity helps as he seeks refuge in Greece on his way to resettlement in France. https://bit.ly/joram100

Amira

Amira, a successful programmer working in Boston joins RISK, a self-sovereign reputation network that connects developers with projects while protecting participants’ anonymity, building reputation, and sending & receiving secure payments. https://bit.ly/Amira100

Five Mental Models

Considering different mental models enables constructive dialogue and requirement reconciliation, opening opportunities to cover a broader range of use cases and develop systems with improved overall applicability and quality.

No Phone Home Statement

We know how to address timely verification without phoning home. It’s high time for identity standards to stop using this feature, whose only defensible use case is surveillance by issuers https://nophonehome.com

Did: v1 Evaluation

On behalf of Digital Bazaar, we assessed their DID method, Veres One, using the DID Method Rubric. https://didevaluations.com/evals/v1.2022.03.01.pdf

Did:web Evaluation

Working with MATTR and Transmute, we evaluated the first DID method designed to work with websites, did:web. https://didevaluations.com/evals/web.2022.03.01.pdf

Did:ion Evaluation

Working with MATTER and Transmute, we evaluated the first scalable bitcoin DID method, did:ion. https://didevaluations.com/evals/ion.2022.03.01.pdf

The Rubric Podcast

A deep dive conversation about Decentralized Identifier Methods https://rubric.cc

Functional Identity

“Identity is how we recognize, remember, and respond to specific people and things, including ourselves”. https://functionalidentity.org

Contact Us Today

To start a discussion about DIDs and VCs in your applications, contact:

Joe Andrieu
[email protected]
+1(805)705-8651