Gimly Joins Off-Blocks and Sphereon in EU SSI Programme

"The eSSIf-lab programme presents a great opportunity for the Off-Blocks team to further develop its product while contributing to the advancement of the European SSI framework and the global SSI ecosystem as a whole."

– Caspar Roelofs, Founder / CEO, Gimly Projects and Partnerships

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THE ESSIF-Lab Programme

eSSIF-Lab is an EU-funded project and aims at advancing the broad uptake of Self-Sovereign Identities (SSI) as a next generation, open and trusted digital identity solution for faster and safer electronic transactions via the Internet and in real life. The lab has three open calls:

• One infrastructure-orientated open call targeting (20) open source technical enhancements and extensions of the SSI framework;
• Two business-oriented open calls targeting (42) commercial competitive SSI components and services.

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The OFF-BLOCKS project

Gimly is excited to be part of the first open business call, as a member of the Off-Blocks team together with Sphereon. Off-Blocks is a leading provider of digital signatures on blockchain, and Sphereon is a technology provider with expertise in SSI, decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable credentials (VCs). Gimly adds an academic background in innovation studies, experience in European innovation programmes, and focus on building partnerships to the team.

Off-Blocks takes a business-oriented development, having been in the space for the last two years. Off-Blocks launched it's showcase product for blockchain powered digital signatures on the App Store at the beginning of 2020, and recently released their associated web portal for public testing. With Sphereon as their technology provider, Off-Blocks will allow businesses to leverage VCs and DIDs for data authentication and selective disclosure in a seamless user interface.

"It's important for Government to embrace this technology; it enables us to confidently build solutions that we know have their support in both adoption and legal standing."
– Colin Campbell, CEO, Off-Blocks

Sphereon has a strong focus on interoperability of their implementations of DIDs and VCs in SSI solutions, being an active contributor to W3C standardizations and SSI working groups. Off-Blocks and Sphereon have previously also been part of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP), where they focused on interoperability of VC's among all participants.

"Having worked on projects with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Dutch Government, we are now thrilled to contribute to the growth of the SSI ecosystem at the European level."
– Sebastian Boender, CEO, Sphereon

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Growing the SSI ecosystem

As project lead, Gimly's goal is to ensure that the Off-Blocks team successfully completes all competitive phases of the programme by focusing on the mutual value that Off-Blocks, the eSSIf-lab programme, and the broader SSI ecosystem can bring to each other. Developments in the Next Generation Internet, Web 3.0 and SSI rely more than any other blockchain related field on collaboration, ecosystem building, and interoperability. The eSSIf-lab programme, with a strong focus on interoperability and integrating SSI components in business solutions, presents a unique opportunity for the mutual benefit of continued development of the Off-Blocks product while contributing to a growing SSI ecosystem.