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Overview

Credentials consist of a set of claims which belong to a Claimer, are attested by an Attester and can be verified by Verifiers.

Credential Overview DiagramCredential Overview Diagram

To get a credential, a Claimer needs to go through following process:

  1. Find a CType a claim should be based on. Potential Attesters and Verifiers might advertise this information themselves.
  2. Make a claim containing a set of properties about themselves.
  3. Potentially request and receive Terms and agree on a Quote with the potential Attester.
  4. Request an attestation from the Attester.
  5. Wait for the claims to be attested by the Attester.

Once attested, the claims are considered to be a valid credential.

To verify a credential, a Claimer can generate a presentation of it to a Verifier, with the following process:

  1. The Verifier may request a credential as the first step, along with with properties to reveal from such Credential.
  2. The Claimer selectively discloses the requested properties and signs the generated presentation.
  3. The Verifier checks the presentation structure, content and signature, and decides whether they trust the Attester of the presented credential.

Each step is described in more detail in the next sections.

If you want to learn about how implement the above flow in a dapp that interacts with a browser extension, please refer to the Credential API specification.