Mutual trust is the basis of cooperation, and every exchange of value, from the barter of goods to e-commerce, rests on a foundation of trust. We used in-person ceremonies from wax seals to signatures to paper credentials to prove something about us and establish our intention and accountability. They worked well in the physical world, but we don’t have a digital equivalent of in-person trust to carry with us and use anywhere with the same ease and breadth as paper-based credentials.

Drummond Reed and Ajay Madhok, two digital identity architects, are now collaborating on digital trust. In this session, they deep dive into digital trust, how it has evolved, and why it is even more critical than traditional trust. Through concrete day-to-day examples, they highlight trust gaps in the digital world and share a framework designed to enable interoperability across trust boundaries.

Ajay Madhok is a growth architect and the Founding Partner of Reboot, a startup Studio. Having experienced innovation from both sides, helping grown-ups innovate and building startups to disrupt them, Ajay’s expertise is in translating good ideas into successful new products. Ajay’s research focus is on organizational resilience through organic agility and perpetual renewal. The purpose-built startup is one such model that draws on his experience in combining foundational assets of an enterprise with startup talent to create new growth vehicles. Ajay earned his B.S. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, and an M.S. degree in Mathematics from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India. He has contributed to OASIS’s XRI and XDI protocols, and is now a contributing member to Trust over IP, a new working group at the Linux Foundation to advance digital trust standards.

Drummond Reed has spent over two decades in Internet identity, security, privacy, and trust frameworks. He joined Evernym as Chief Trust Officer after Evernym acquired Respect Network, where he was co-founder and CEO. At the Trust over IP Foundation, Drummond is a member of the Steering Committee and co-chair of the Governance Stack Working Group. At the Sovrin Foundation, he serves as chair of the Sovrin Governance Framework Working Group. He is co-editor of the DID (Decentralized Identifiers) specification in the W3C DID (Decentralized Identifier) Working Group.