Project Health

Hyperledger Aries is healthy, seeing lots of activity overall, especially in the Aries Framework JavaScript, Aries Bifold (mobile wallet), and Aries VCX communities. Lots of progress being made in those projects!

Questions/Issues for the TOC

None.

Releases

The following Aries releases occurred in the last quarter:

  • Aries Cloud Agent Python – 0.8.0-rc0, 0.8.0
  • Aries Framework JavaScript – v0.3.2, v0.3.3, 0.3.4-alpha0 to 0.3.4-alpha17, 0.4.0-alpha18 to 0.4.0-alpha95
  • Aries Askar – v0.2.8
  • Aries VCX Releases – v0.3.4, v0.4.0-dev1 to v0.4.0-dev12
  • Aries Framework Go – v0.1.9

Of the 28 Aries repositories, all but 3 have been updated in 2023.

Interoperability status can be seen here: https://aries-interop.info.

Overall Activity in the Past Quarter

Per the Aries Activity Dashboard for the first three months of 2023, Aries codebases had 442 PRs (up 11%) from 81 contributors (up 21%).

  • Lots of activity towards integrating Hyperledger AnonCreds into all of the Aries Frameworks to enable ledger-agnostic implementations.
  • An implementation of OpenID4VCs (issuance) with Aries Framework JavaScript has been completed. This is the first experiment in using OpenID4VCs with Aries. The community is also considering the feasibility of issuing and presenting ISO mdocs verifiable credentials using Aries Frameworks.
  • The effort to move off the Indy SDK continued this quarter with the following results:
  • After being awarded a BC Gov Mobile Verifier Code With Us opportunity, DSR implemented in the Aries Bifold wallet the ability for one wallet to request a presentation from another wallet, and for two wallets to establish a connection and communicate (messaging and presentation requests).
  • Discussions continue on Aries Interop Profile (AIP) v3.0, which extend AIP 2.0 to be based on DIDComm V2, and a number of Aries community members contributed to a DIDComm V2.0 Connect-a-thon at IIW.
  • Continued good progress was made in the community on the use of Overlays Capture Architecture (OCA) to power the on-screen display of credentials, as mentioned in previous reports. An Aries RFC has been proposed and gone through a couple of iterations, with good feedback – OCA for Aries RFC PR, OCA for Aries RFC (proposed) and OCA for Aries Style Guide (proposed).
    • OCA has been implemented in Aries Bifold. However, we have had a challenge in figuring out the best way to distribute OCA Bundles. As a short cut around the problem the community has created a GitHub OCA Bundles repository, with a governance model allowing anyone to submit a (valid) OCA Bundle for their credential type. The repo is currently in the BC Gov GitHub organization, but may be moved as OCA Bundles become more prevalent in the community. A tool, the OCA Explorer has been built to make it easy to see and evolve OCA Bundles implementations. Check it out!

Aries Framework Reports

Aries VCX

  • Rewrite of Aries messages crate
    • Performance improvements
    • Overall code quality improvements
  • Rewrite of NodeJS wrapper
    • unlocked upgrade to NodeJS 18
    • 20x FFI performance improvement
    • significantly improved safety and maintainability
  • Enabled usage of aries-vcx with Aries Askar plugged-in
  • Enabled opt-in usage of credx library for proof verifier (libindy)
  • Adoption of new approach building Aries state machines
    • fully leverages power of Rust typing system
    • so far applied on Connection protocol (other protocols in progress/pending)
  • Interop compatibility improvements
  • 2 projects rolled into LFX mentorship program
  • Break down of repo into smaller crates, decoupling of mediation from Connection protocol, other general refactoring

Aries Framework JavaScript

Aries Framework JavaScript has made significant progress in the first quarter of 2023. The bulk of the work has been towards implementing ledger-agnostic AnonCreds, with an initial implementation for Hyperleger Indy, and the work on cheqd.io integration started. The integration of the new shared components (Aries Askar, AnonCreds RS and Indy VDR) has been implemented.

All the work has been going into preparation for the 0.4.0 release of Aries Framework JavaScript, which will be the first release of the framework that is truly ledger-agnostic.

In addition, work has been done to expand the supported exchange protocols to include OpenID4VCI, allowing credentials to be received and shared using different protocols.

Aries Cloud Agent Python

Aries Cloud Agent Python v0.8.0 was released in 2023Q1, with contributions from 32 individuals. Work this quarter was focused on enabling upgrades of existing deployments to Aries Askar, the use of ACA-Py as an Aries Mediator (the Aries Mediator Service repository), updating ACA-Py to use Hyperledger AnonCreds, and the launch of a new ACA-Py documentation site aca-py.org

The Indy/Aries stack continues to be the global leader in SSI/verifiable data solutions, with AnonCreds the most used credential format.

Current Plans

  • Continuing the work on eliminating the use of the Indy SDK in favor of the Aries Askar/Indy VDR/anoncreds-rs across frameworks and deployments of those frameworks.
  • Continued expansion of features in mobile wallet apps, including building on the wallet-to-wallet support added in Q1, and expanding support for OCA to enable beautifully displayed credentials.
  • Continue the work to adding ledger agnostic Hyperledger AnonCreds support in all of the active Aries Frameworks.
  • Promotion of a place for issuers to publish and wallets/verifiers to use Overlays Capture Architecture (OCA) bundles.
  • Rust DID resolver, DID parser in Aries VCX
    • Not specific to Aries
    • Currently implementing did:sov only, did:indy, did:web will be added next

Maintainer Diversity

There are currently 62 people on the 48 Hyperledger Aries teams representing at least 19 organizations.

Contributor Diversity

In Q1 there were contributions from 81 individuals representing at least 16 organizations.

Additional Information

Nothing