Building the future of education identity for inclusive lifelong learning.

Tangle Labs are no strangers to building technology for social good, and over the past nine months we have been focusing on exploring the value verifiable identity can provide to support opportunities in line with the UNESCO mandate for lifelong learning through decentralised identity, open badges, and verifiable credentials for learners.

Earlier this year we announced our role as one of two leading technology partners within the NGDIL (Next Generation Digital Identity in Learning) project. Working alongside UNESCO learning city Oss and UNESCO learning institute Koning Willem I College, in the Netherlands, we spent the past nine months researching and developing a live demonstration of self-sovereign identity technology that can support learners with seamless lifelong learning experiences. Putting the privacy and security of the user front and centre, the demo, built using the backend for the upcoming AuvoID no-code identity platform from Tangle Labs, was a valuable illustration of the interoperability of the technology, displayed by the use of not only the Vira identity wallet from Tangle Labs, but also the UniMe wallet from Impierce Technologies. 

Vira and UniMe identity wallet applications on two mobile devices laying in front of a laptop with the NGDIL demo on the screen.

Why interoperability matters.

The technology used to build out the wallets, both at Tangle Labs and Impierce, follows the EU guidelines for eIDAS 2.0 and the European Digital Identity Wallet framework. These standards-based frameworks will be coming into effect in 2025 and provide a guideline for interoperability between different technology providers, to establish an EU wide ecosystem that can support reusable verifiable identity and credentials across borders.

What we achieved with the NGDIL demo is to show that the technology already works in a live implementation. Having multiple technology providers interacting in the same ecosystem shows that there is no necessary vendor lock-in and that if the standards are used, anyone can build and gain value from participating in such an ecosystem.

The importance of interoperability and a collaborative approach to the adoption of the technology is centred around the value it brings to everyone within an ecosystem. In current identity ecosystems a centralised approach is taken, with one central party having oversight over everything, take Google single sign on as an example. With a more decentralised approach, the user can securely interact using self-sovereign identity, without the need of a third party. This allows for complete control over who learners share their data with and how. This also allows for more streamlined experiences, through the portability of user data. Rather than having to share numerous paper documents, or go through laborious verification processes, a simple sharing of instantly verifiable credentials is all that is required – cutting down onboarding times, simplifying verification, and creating accessible user experiences that can offer more inclusive and obtainable lifelong learning opportunities. 

Tangle Labs CTO Merul stood on a big stage holding a microphone and talking about the NGDIL demo presentation on a big screen behind him.

Where do we go from here?

As eIDAS 2.0 comes into effect in 2025, this technology will become mandatory for numerous sectors – including education, banking, healthcare – which means it’s time to start integrating now. And, after presenting the NGDIL project and live technology demonstration at numerous events across Europe, it has evidently opened the eyes of many to the potential this technology can provide within the context of lifelong learning.  

Through the research and development of this year we have opened doors to new partnerships, projects, and opportunities that will bring this technology into the real world in 2024. The enthusiasm behind what we have created, along with KW1C, Oss, and Impierce, at the NGDIL is clear from the ever-increasing partners that want to join the group.

2024 will bring numerous live deployments of the technology using open badges and micro-credentials for learners, as well as expanding the versatility of the technology to support wider interoperability across different ecosystems.

From Tangle Labs you can expect regular feature expansion within the Vira wallet and the launch of our no-code identity platform AuvoID and AuvoVault – a compartmentalised, encrypted identity back-up system for the cloud, as well as more partnership and project announcements over the coming months.

Try out the NGDIL demo here

QR code to scan to download the Vira demo wallet for
iOS (test flight) or Android (apk)