Integrated Trust Network (ITN)

Integrated Trust Network (ITN)

The member-owned and operated ITN is a layer-two, protocol-agnostic digital infrastructure built to provide trusted identity services for IoT commerce. To use the ITN, members do not have to know/develop blockchain. Blockchain is used only to anchor World Wide Web3 Consortium (W3C) Decentralized Identifiers. All ecosystem transactions use W3C Verifiable Credentials, along with data schemas developed by MOBI and others such as ISO, IEEE, and SAE.

The member-owned and operated ITN is a layer-two, protocol-agnostic digital infrastructure built to provide trusted identity services for connected mobility and IoT commerce.

What is the ITN?

The ITN is a scalable, protocol-agnostic digital infrastructure to provide trusted identity services for connected mobility and IoT commerce. The ITN was launched by the MOBI community and is currently being developed in collaboration with MEF, AAIS, and other consortia.

The goal is to unlock monetization opportunities across usage-based services by allowing application interoperability and multiparty data sharing, enabling participants to execute trusted decentralized transactions at the edge.

Digital Business and the Trust Problem

Currently, digital transactions rely on identities issued by centralized platforms to prove their credentials. However, in addition to being vulnerable to growing cybersecurity threats, centralized approaches to identity management fail to address the trust problems created by the rise of decentralized services, IOT, and Generative AI. As digitization advances, it will become increasingly challenging — and costly — to verify data authenticity, secure digital perimeters, and ensure cross-border regulation compliance.

The Need for Self-Sovereign Identity

Overcoming these challenges requires a Zero Trust framework, which requires every entity to authenticate and authorize every other entity for every single digital interaction at all times. Since this is not possible through centralized means at scale, we need ways to establish trusted identities that are self-sovereign and decentralized.

ITN: A New Paradigm for Digital Trust

The ITN is the first Web3 infrastructure for trusted, self-sovereign identities for businesses. Specifically, the ITN is a federated network of member-owned and operated nodes designed to overcome the security and resiliency failures of centralized systems by providing decentralized infrastructure as the required core trust services of governance, authority, identity, and assurance for multi-party business ecosystems.

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Decentralized Identity & Trusted Trips

Trusted Trips, Privacy, Zero Trust and the ITN

Explore how the ITN enables decentralized identity management and preserves privacy for trusted locations and trusted trips.

read more on medium

MOBI ITN0001/WP/2023

ITN Value & Technical Narrative White Paper

Dive deeper into what the ITN is, how it works, and our roadmap for ITN adoption in the mobility ecosystem.

EXPLORE MORE ON itn

Why Self-Sovereign Identity?

IoT in the Age of Self-Sovereign Identity

Learn more about how Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) can be used to solve the most pressing security challenges in the IoT ecosystem.

learn more on medium

How It Works

The ITN acts a registry for World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs). Rather than being issued and controlled by centralized authorities, DIDs are self-sovereign — created and managed by the entities to whom they belong. When anchored in a trust network such as the ITN, DIDs allow entities to engage in secure, tamper-evident transactions via W3C Verifiable Credentials. This reduces the reliance on centralized authorities and enhances entities’ data autonomy while shielding sensitive data from aggregators and bots.

MOBI’s Decentralized Web3 Infrastructure

MOBI’s Web3 Infrastructure, designed to facilitate tamper-evident, privacy-preserving transactions between SSDT™ holders, consists of two member-owned and -operated layers: Citopia and the Integrated Trust Network (ITN).

Whereas most Web3 solutions combine identity verification and transactions processing, we choose to separate them into two distinct organizations, each with its own legal structure, governance, network, and operators. This increases decentralization and enhances data privacy by reducing the market power and information advantage of any single organization. The separation permits Citopia to use any W3C-compliant DIDs registry network, meaning Citopia users aren’t locked to the ITN (and vice versa).

  • Citopia is a decentralized marketplace built to enable SSDT™ onboarding & management, application discovery, and credential validation. Learn more about Citopia

  • The Integrated Trust Network (ITN) is a global, cross-industry W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) registry. Protocol, cloud, and technology agnostic trust anchor for digital identity management.

  • Ease of Deploying Applications on Citopia & ITN: Node operators gain first-mover advantage in building scalable, privacy-preserving Web3 applications on top of Citopia while leveraging the ITN as a trust anchor for identity. Through active participation in the Citopia and ITN networks, organizations of all types can establish leadership in cross-industry interoperability and business automation.

  • Unlock New Streamlined Business Models: Node operators have the opportunity to accrue new net revenue through the creation of more efficient, privacy-preserving, and globally compliant business models based on distributed, trusted data — all while retaining their legacy systems.

  • Access to Cross-Industry Interoperability & Business Automation Ecosystem: Node operators gain access to an interoperable, Zero Trust ecosystem of applications for secure communication and collaboration on multiparty business processes. This offers unprecedented access to new customer bases and enables the formation of cross-industry partnerships without the need for costly one-off integrations.

  • Participate in Community Governance: The community-owned and -operated infrastructure of Citopia and the ITN helps to prevent centralized monopolies and build network resilience by ensuring that there is no single point of failure. By running nodes on Citopia and the ITN, MOBI members are empowered to play a significant role in decision-making, contributing their insights to shape the networks’ future direction.

  • Low Barrier to Entry: Operating a node is relatively inexpensive and does not require significant technical resources, meaning organizations of all sizes can easily get started deploying applications on top of Citopia. By facilitating easy entry, the Citopia and ITN networks promote inclusivity and democratize access to cutting-edge decentralized identity solutions. The elimination of complex integrations and reduced cybersecurity costs further paves the way for newcomers worldwide to engage with markets, fostering innovation and growth across industries.

Recommended Skill Set for Full Stack Developer Using Citopia and the ITN
  • Languages: TypeScript, JavaScript/NodeJS, Go
  • DevOps: REST APIs, Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka, Cloud Platforms (e.g. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Digital Ocean)
    • Note: ITN deployment scripts are available in AWS & Azure (more to come)
  • Not required but familiarity would be ideal: PostgreSQL, Redis, CouchDB, IPFS, libp2p, DIDComm 2.X, W3C DIDs and W3C VCs

  • Note: Familiarity with blockchain development is not required to run a node on Citopia or the ITN.

Blockchain is often hailed as a “trust machine,” capable of replacing various trust-related services offered by traditional entities like banks, escrows, and digital platforms. While blockchain can accommodate a wide range of data, it’s crucial to exercise caution in deciding what goes on-chain. Namely, sensitive personal and business information should remain off-chain.

Blockchains are not efficient databases due to the significant overhead they introduce. Therefore, the use of blockchain-based trust solutions should be deliberate and well-considered. To make this determination, one must grasp the limitations of Web2 technology, centralized data solutions, and the benefits blockchain brings to the table.

By combining SSDTs with W3C DIDs anchored in blockchains (multiple chains therefore not to be locked into one) and VCs within federated networks, we can harness the strengths of both approaches. This entails achieving tamper-evident, redundancy, and transparency, enhancing data privacy and security (by pushing data to the edge for transactions instead of connecting to centralized databases), and combining the fraud resistance of public blockchains with the speed, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of cloud data storage.

MOBI’s Decentralized Web3 Infrastructure

MOBI’s Web3 Infrastructure, designed to facilitate tamper-evident, privacy-preserving transactions between SSDT™ holders, consists of two member-owned and -operated layers: Citopia and the Integrated Trust Network (ITN).

Whereas most Web3 solutions combine identity verification and transactions processing, we choose to separate them into two distinct organizations, each with its own legal structure, governance, network, and operators. This increases decentralization and enhances data privacy by reducing the market power and information advantage of any single organization. The separation permits Citopia to use any W3C-compliant DIDs registry network, meaning Citopia users aren’t locked to the ITN (and vice versa).

  • Citopia is a decentralized marketplace built to enable SSDT™ onboarding & management, application discovery, and credential validation. Learn more about Citopia

  • The Integrated Trust Network (ITN) is a global, cross-industry W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) registry. Protocol, cloud, and technology agnostic trust anchor for digital identity management.

  • Ease of Deploying Applications on Citopia & ITN: Node operators gain first-mover advantage in building scalable, privacy-preserving Web3 applications on top of Citopia while leveraging the ITN as a trust anchor for identity. Through active participation in the Citopia and ITN networks, organizations of all types can establish leadership in cross-industry interoperability and business automation.

  • Unlock New Streamlined Business Models: Node operators have the opportunity to accrue new net revenue through the creation of more efficient, privacy-preserving, and globally compliant business models based on distributed, trusted data — all while retaining their legacy systems.

  • Access to Cross-Industry Interoperability & Business Automation Ecosystem: Node operators gain access to an interoperable, Zero Trust ecosystem of applications for secure communication and collaboration on multiparty business processes. This offers unprecedented access to new customer bases and enables the formation of cross-industry partnerships without the need for costly one-off integrations.

  • Participate in Community Governance: The community-owned and -operated infrastructure of Citopia and the ITN helps to prevent centralized monopolies and build network resilience by ensuring that there is no single point of failure. By running nodes on Citopia and the ITN, MOBI members are empowered to play a significant role in decision-making, contributing their insights to shape the networks’ future direction.

  • Low Barrier to Entry: Operating a node is relatively inexpensive and does not require significant technical resources, meaning organizations of all sizes can easily get started deploying applications on top of Citopia. By facilitating easy entry, the Citopia and ITN networks promote inclusivity and democratize access to cutting-edge decentralized identity solutions. The elimination of complex integrations and reduced cybersecurity costs further paves the way for newcomers worldwide to engage with markets, fostering innovation and growth across industries.

Recommended Skill Set for Full Stack Developer Using Citopia and the ITN
  • Languages: TypeScript, JavaScript/NodeJS, Go
  • DevOps: REST APIs, Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka, Cloud Platforms (e.g. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Digital Ocean)
    • Note: ITN deployment scripts are available in AWS & Azure (more to come)
  • Not required but familiarity would be ideal: PostgreSQL, Redis, CouchDB, IPFS, libp2p, DIDComm 2.X, W3C DIDs and W3C VCs

  • Note: Familiarity with blockchain development is not required to run a node on Citopia or the ITN.

Pilots to Demonstrate Citopia & ITN Capabilities

Pilots to Demonstrate Citopia & ITN Capabilities

Alongside our global community, we’ve demonstrated several potential use cases for Citopia and ITN services through various pilot projects. Citopia and the ITN services are business-to-business (B2B) only. Together, Citopia and the ITN provide the necessary infrastructure for node operators to build out secure, seamless, globally compliant web services and applications. MOBI membership is required to operate a node on Citopia and/or the ITN. Contact us to learn more about becoming a node operator

EU Commission — Vehicle Self-Reporting of CO2 Emissions

Completed January 2022 in partnership with the EU Commission. Read more about the Vehicle Emissions Pilot

Citopia MaaS/Multimodal — Transit IDEA Project

The Transit IDEA Program is a part of the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP). TCRP is sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). Read more about the MaaS pilot

EV Reservation, Charging, and Payment

Completed November 2021 in partnership with members of the DRIVES Program. Read more about the EV Reservation, Charging, and Payment Pilot

EV Battery Track-and-Trace — Battery Birth Certificate

Completed June 2022 in partnership with Supply Chain Working Group members. Read more about the EV Battery Track-and-Trace Pilot

Dealer Floorplan Audit

Completed February 2023 in partnership with Finance, Securitization, and Smart Contracts Working Group members. Read more about the Dealer Floorplan Audit Pilot

As the growing Internet of Things (IoT) brings an exponential increase in digital transactions, it is necessary to develop new ways to identify and verify the entities involved in these transactions. In light of growing cybersecurity threats, with the rise of big tech data aggregators and increasingly pervasive malware, consumers, regulators, and organizations are increasingly concerned with the ability to preserve data privacy and assert ownership over their identity and digital assets.

In 2019, W3C published the first draft of its Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) standard. The DIDs standard defined a new type of identifier: one which is universal, cryptographically protected, and which links entities to relevant attributes, characteristics, and capabilities.

Rather than being issued and controlled by centralized authorities, DIDs are self-sovereign — i.e. created and managed by the entities to whom they belong (or a verified owner/controller of that entity). When anchored in a tamper-evident decentralized trust network such as the ITN, DIDs allow entities to engage in unique, private, and secure transactions using W3C Verifiable Credentials. The DIDs standard was advanced to a W3C recommendation in July 2022.

The creation of a standardized framework for decentralized trusted identity will reduce the reliance on centralized authorities and empower connected entities to own and control their data while shielding sensitive data from aggregators and bots. By enabling more secure IoT transactions, reducing the cost of trust, and opening the door to a number of multi-party applications for business automation, trusted identity promises to unlock the potential for a more robust and democratic IoT commerce ecosystem.

The Integrated Trust Network (ITN) is a scalable, protocol-agnostic digital infrastructure to provide trusted identity services for connected mobility and IoT commerce.

The ITN was launched by the MOBI community and is currently being developed in collaboration with MEF, AAIS, and other consortia. The goal is to unlock monetization opportunities across usage-based services by allowing application interoperability and multiparty

data sharing, enabling participants to execute trusted decentralized transactions at the edge.

The Web3 economy is projected to be worth $81.5 billion in 2030. With increasing enterprise adoption, the technology is quickly becoming a mainstream reality.

The ITN leverages W3C DIDs standard to provide a secure, decentralized, privacy-preserving framework for managing trusted identities to enable trusted transactions in the Web3 economy. MOBI and its members are building Citopia, a federated Web3 marketplace that uses ITN core services to empower

individuals and organizations to take charge of their own data, unlock multiparty business automation, and propel connected mobility and IoT commerce worldwide.