2024-09-21 –, LAB 4
Matrix is an open protocol for decentralised, secure communications. Its federation architecture is exemplary in supporting open standards, privacy protection, user choice and other aspects of system operations. Its digital identity system however is not fully decentralised and is a significant weakness in the overall user experience, authenticity and privacy protection. In this talk, Wenjing will share with the Matrix community an initiative to bring decentralised identity to Matrix and discuss both technical and user facing advantages of doing so. He will also dive into open source implementation options and seek community feedback and interests in such an initiative.
For many decentralisation goals that Matrix wants to achieve, digital identity is an essential component. Without strongly secure identity, E2EE, for instance, can be seriously weakened in its intended privacy goals. Without decentralised identity, not only authenticity and privacy can be compromised, the bad effects of centralisation can be re-constituted in the application layer or with AI capabilities. Wenjing is an expert and active contributor to the OpenWallet, Trust over IP, W3C, and related communities focused on digital identities. His talk will introduce a concrete initiative to combine the latest decentralised identity and protocols within the Matrix architecture and discuss the benefits of that to Matrix users and ecosystem.
Wenjing Chu is a Senior Director of Technology Strategy at Futurewei Technologies, Inc. He leads new technology development in the future of computing, trust, and trustworthy AI.
He is a founding board member of the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF) and its Technical Advisory Council (TAC). He is also a founding board member of the Trust of IP Foundation (ToIP). In ToIP, he is a primary author of the Trust Spanning Protocol Specification (TSP) and of the Technology Architecture Specification, while serving as Co-Chair for the Trust Spanning Protocol Task Force and for the AI and Metaverse Task Force. He also previously served in leadership roles for the Linux Foundation’s Networking Foundation and the Edge Computing Foundation. Over his career, he had been an entrepreneurial and technical lead in several successful startups including Airespace, Inc. and Sentient Networks, Inc.