The time for the eIDAS Bridge

By Andreas Abraham, Project Manager VIDchain, Validated ID

Validated ID participated in the European Commission’s (EC) ISA2 [1] program with the eIDAS bridge project. During this project, Validated ID developed an innovative way to establish a bridge between self-sovereign identity (SSI) ecosystems and the eIDAS system. In SSI ecosystems, documents are in the form of verifiable credentials (VCs) following its data format, which is not supported by eIDAS. In eIDAS, documents can be signed using qualified electronic certificates (QECs) to ensure their authenticity and integrity as well as show the originator.

The eIDAS bridge project closes the gap between these two ecosystems and enables the use of QECs for VC- based documents. Signing a document with a QEC as well as the verification of signed documents are the main parts of the functionality that the eIDAS Bridge offers.

The eIDAS bridge project ended in June 2021, resulting in an open-source implementation that is available on Joinup [2]. This tool serves as a reference implementation and can be used for whole Europe. The benefits of this tool lie clearly in reusing existing QECs in the new SSI ecosystem without having to establish these QECs again but still using the legal value adhered to those.  

Validated ID, as a pioneer of the SSI paradigm, further improved the eIDAS Bridge and integrated it into their VIDchain services. Improving the security for the end-users and making the usage of the eIDAS Bridge easily possible within VIDchain services were just two aspects of its further development. VIDchain additionally offers an identity wallet implementation, the so-called VIDwallet, which can be used together with the VIDchain services aiming to implement a state-of-the-art SSI system and beyond.

Please find additional information on Validated ID’s latest eIDAS bridge update in our blog post: The time for the eIDAS Bridge.

If you have questions about the eIDAS Bridge, VIDchain, or VIDwallet, don’t hesitate to contact us at vidchain@validatedid.com. 

[1] ISA2 – Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens

[2] https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/ssi-eidas-bridge