Project Health

The newly divided Hyperledger Aries continues at a healthy pace, seeing lots of activity in most of the Aries sub-communities, albeit with some in different homes. As covered in the Aries Annual Report, the former Aries Framework JavaScript and Aries Bifold (mobile wallet) are now housed at the Open Wallet Foundation as Credo-TS and Bifold Wallet, respectively. Aries Cloud Agent Python and a set of related Aries repositories remain very active within the Hyperledger Foundation, with new releases and plans to (finally!) publish a 1.0 version.

ACA-Py was recently celebrated as a runner-up in the Future of Government Awards “Open Source Creation” category by the UN Development Programme, the AWS Institute and Public Digital. This is a global award with and ACA-Py was competing against over 300 nominated open source projects.

A new, human friendly publication of the Aries RFCs was created. This long overdue addition is an alternative to navigating the Aries RFCs repository, which is pretty horrible. The new, GitHub Action-generated site includes a specific list of the subset of RFCs that make up Aries Interop Profile 2.0. While this is a great start, there remains more work to be done to complete the publication – a list of to dos.

The Aries VCX framework has recently lost its primary supporter, ABSA and as a result is “available” for other sponsors to pick up as a mature, capable, open source Aries Framework, written in Rust. At least one of the lead maintainers is a contractor and as such, might also be interested in continuing the ground breaking work the team has been doing. We’ll monitor the activity around Aries VCX to see if the repository needs to be archived, or if another interested party will be developing it further.

The Aries Framework Go repository has also been abandoned by its previous organizational sponsor Gen Digital and archived. Some of the code within the repository, notably the BBS Signatures Go implementation has been extracted from the archived repository.

Questions/Issues for the TOC

Suggestions on what to do with Aries VCX. One thought is a Webinar on what the code base contains to publicize the fact that the it is “up for grabs” for anyone interested.

Feedback from the TOC:

  • Add an issue in a Project repo that is kept open that requests people add comments that indicate they are using the repo/project, and if they are interested in being a maintainer. This is useful in this situation but is a best practice for all projects.
  • Put an article about Aries VCX into the /dev/weekly newsletter.
  • Consider putting on a webinar/Meetup about the Aries VCX framework, what it is, current state, and the opportunity for picking up the framework.

Releases

The following Aries releases occurred in the last two quarters (including the time covered by the Annual Report and so not yet reported):

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

Overall Activity in the Past Quarter

Per the Aries Activity Dashboard for the months of January-March 2024, Aries codebases had 698 PRs (up 40%) from 155 contributors (down -5%). Those numbers are up significantly from the previous Quarterly Report (2023-Q4). The numbers do include the repositories that have moved from Hyperledger to the Open Wallet Foundation, as well as some obsolete (but unchanging) repositories. Per Ry Jones there is not a good way for us to control the included list of repos.

  • Load testing on ACA-Py as a server component produced good results. BC Gov’s tests showed that we had more than enough issuing capacity for our needs for the forseeable future. The Aries Akrida tool developed and released by Indicio PBC in response to a BC Gov “Code With Us” Aries Load Test Generator open source procurement has proven to be an extremely capable Aries/DIDComm load testing tool. Easy to use and very powerful!
  • The PR for removing the Indy SDK from ACA-Py is in review and will soon be merged, eliminating the older component in favour of newer and more capable replacements (Aries Askar, Indy VDR, and AnonCreds RS). Good to see that transition!
    • NOTE: THIS DOES NOT REMOVE INDY SUPPORT FROM ACA-PY!
  • Support for AnonCreds in W3C VCDM Format in Aries has been implemented in Credo-TS and Bifold Wallet, with the PR to add support in Aries Cloud Agent Python expected to be merged soon.
  • Work has begun on adding DIDComm v2 support in ACA-Py.
  • We expect to soon start on adding support for a new, web-based DID Method, “Trust DID Web” (did:tdw) to ACA-Py and Credo-TS shortly. did:tdw combines the simplicity of did:web with features expected only with a ledger-based DID Method.

Aries Framework Reports

Aries VCX

Work continued on Aries VCX through the end of the quarter, and through the end of April, but is no longer funded. To be determined if someone else picks up the work, or if the Framework will be archived.

It is a lot of great code!

Aries Framework JavaScript Credo-TS

The former Agent Framework JavaScript has moved to the Open Wallet Foundation (OWF) as Credo-TS. Reporting on the framework has shifted to OWF.

Aries Cloud Agent Python

Aries Cloud Agent Python (ACA-Py) work in the quarter included the following highlights:

  • Completion of Aries Interop Profile 2.0
  • Completion of work to enable the transition from the use of unqualified DIDs, and to DIDComm V2.
  • Support for the ledger-agnostic Hyperledger AnonCreds.
  • Maintenance and performance optimizations.
  • Evolving the release management processes of the Aries Cloud Agent Python plugins repository – an “app store” for modular extensions to ACA-Py.
  • A very large volume of updates, enhancements, fixes.
  • Load testing of deployed instances of ACA-Py.
  • Deprecation announcements about older features we want to see phased out.
  • Preparation for the v1.0.0 release of ACA-Py.
  • Exploratory work on adding DIDComm v2 support to ACA-Py.

Current Plans

Maintainer Diversity

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

Contributor Diversity

In the quarter there were contributions from 64 individuals representing at least 18 organizations.

Additional Information

None