It is widely acknowledged that blockchain technology could be a breakthrough in digital identity. Blockchain identity projects have been announced for both Bitcoin (Blockstack Onename) and Ethereum (Consensus uPort). But neither of these blockchains are designed from the ground up for digital identity. Last September saw the announcement of the Sovrin Foundation (http://www.sovrin.org/), a global non-profit launching the first public blockchain designed exclusively for self-sovereign digital identity.



Evernym Chief Trust Officer Drummond Reed (http://www.evernym.com/team/), one of 11 Sovrin Foundation Trustees (https://www.sovrin.org/about/), will give a talk explaining why Sovrin is a public permissioned ledger, the role of the Sovrin Foundation and its Technical Governance Board, why the Sovrin Foundation joined the Hyperledger Project, and the schedule is for launching the network starting in February 2017. For the technically inclined, he can also cover Sovrin architecture, the Plenum consensus protocol, Sovrin DIDs (decentralized identifiers) and DDOs (DID descriptor objects), Sovrin agents, and how Sovrin enables a Decentralized Public Key Infrastructure (DPKI).