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ToIP 2025 Q2 Quarterly Report

See our 2024 Annual Report for background information about ToIP.

In the first half of 2025, our active Working Groups were:

  1. Governance Stack Working Group (GSWG)
  2. Technology Stack Working Group (TSWG)
  3. Ecosystem & Governance Working Group (EGWG)
  4. KERI Suite Working Group (KSWG)
  5. Data Modeling and Representation Working Group (DMRWG)
  6. Concepts and Terminology Working Group (CTWG)

For a status report from each of these WGs, see this Google Slides deck from our June 2025 All-Members meeting.

In its May 2025 meeting, the ToIP Steering Committee approved two new Working Groups:

  1. AI & Human Trust Working Group (AIMWG) — began work in July 2025.
  2. Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group (DTGWG) — will begin work in September 2025.

The charters for both of these new GGs follow below. Both WGs have the following standard JDF IPR terms:

AI & Human Trust Working Group (AIMWG) Charter

(Supersedes the AI & Human Trust Task Force of the TSWG)

The AI and Human Trust Working Group (AIM) is to focus on studies and recommendations that (1) apply ToIP solutions to enhance human trust in AI technologies, and (2) integrate AI technologies to better solve trust challenges in the context of human and AI interactions.The Working Group’s deliverables may include insight reports, position white papers, and specifications and recommendations.

Example areas of work include but not limited to White papers about strengthening trust in human and AI interactions leveraging the Trust Spanning Protocol (TSP) and other components of the ToIP stack, Communication protocols between AI agents, and between AI agents and non-AI data resources, services, tools etc., Authenticity and provenance of content and data, Personhood and AI agent identities, Delegation, accountability, and control of AI agents, and How to build trust in AI Agents frameworks.

All IPR options will remain the same as the latest TSWG charter.

Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group (DTGWG) Charter

The scope of the Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group (DTGWG) is to define the socio-technical standards for a decentralized trust graph where there is no centralized database and all parties control their own subgraph of trust relationships. This work includes specifying requirements for key management and recovery, verifiable identifiers, verifiable credentials, verifiable relationship credentials, social vouching, relationship cards (r-cards), privacy-preserving zero-knowledge proofs, trust task protocols, trust registries, out-of-band introductions, UI/UX affordances, decentralized naming and discovery mechanisms, and governance considerations. This work will be based on the Design Principles for the ToIP Stack, the ToIP Technology Architecture Specification, other ToIP technical specifications, and complementary open standards for decentralized digital trust infrastructure.

TAC Review

TAC Meeting Recording 2025.10.09 -- ToIP Annual report (and Q2 quarterly report) discussion starts at the 10:45 mark.

Assessment Notes from Diane Mueller

Thanks again to the ToIP community for preparing and submitting the Q2 2025 Quarterly Report. I’ve reviewed the material as a TAC member and wanted to share my assessment of overall project and community health, with references to the relevant artifacts.

Strengths

  • Continuity of WG activity: Core working groups remain active — GSWG, TSWG, EGWG, KSWG, DMRWG, and CTWG. The continuity across annual and quarterly reports shows resilience.

  • Expansion with new WGs: Approval of the AI & Human Trust WG (AIMWG) and Decentralized Trust Graph WG (DTGWG) in May 2025 demonstrates responsiveness to emerging challenges (AI trust, decentralized trust relationships). Both charters follow JDF’s standard IP terms (CC BY 4.0, W3C Mode, Apache 2.0).

  • Clear chartering: The AIMWG and DTGWG charters are well-scoped and grounded in existing ToIP principles and the Technology Architecture. • AIMWG builds on prior AI & Human Trust Task Force work under TSWG and focuses on applying ToIP’s Trust Spanning Protocol and related components to AI authenticity and provenance. • DTGWG takes on the socio-technical standards of decentralized trust graphs, with concrete elements such as verifiable identifiers, social vouching, r-cards, and zero-knowledge proofs.

  • Foundation documents remain referenced: New readers are pointed back to ToIP’s core materials: • ToIP Model: https://trustoverip.org/toip-model/ • Introduction to ToIP v2.0 (Nov 2021): https://trustoverip.org/wp-content/uploads/Introduction-to-ToIP-V2.0-2021-11-17.pdf • Design Principles v1.0 (Nov 2021): https://trustoverip.org/wp-content/uploads/Design-Principles-for-the-ToIP-Stack-V1.0-2022-11-17.pdf • Technology Architecture Specification (PR2, Sept 2024): https://trustoverip.github.io/TechArch/

Areas to watch

  • Evidence of adoption: The quarterly report lists WGs and new charters but does not surface adoption or implementation signals (pilots, interop results, deployments). Including even a few highlights would help TAC track impact.

  • Spec maturity: Most references are still at the “draft/implementer’s draft” stage. TAC will want clarity on which WGs are targeting Candidate or Final specifications in the next quarters.

  • Integration of new WGs: AIMWG and DTGWG charters are promising, but TAC should monitor whether they achieve critical mass of contributors beyond the initial proposers.

Overall assessment The Q2 2025 report shows steady continuity in ToIP’s core working groups and thoughtful expansion into two important new areas. The next step is to pair this structural growth with evidence of adoption and progress on maturing specifications. This would make quarterly reports more useful for TAC in evaluating ecosystem impact as well as community activity.