Verifiable Relationship Credentials (VRCs)

Semantic & Data Protocol

A verifiable credential type specifying claims that attest a verifiable first-person trust relationship between two holders of Personhood Credentials. VRCs are issued peer-to-peer rather than by a centralized authority — each party signs a credential attesting to the relationship — and together they compose into a decentralized trust graph that can be presented in privacy-preserving ways (e.g., threshold proofs like 'has at least 50 verified relationships' without revealing the specific contacts). VRCs add a relationship-credential semantic layer on top of the W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model. Originally proposed in the January 2025 Ayra Association paper on Verifiable Relationship Credentials; being standardized by the Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group (DTGWG) alongside PHCs .

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Detalhes

Licença N/A — specification document, not source code; reference implementations in OpenVTC (Apache-2.0) and other FPP-ecosystem projects are open source
Status de Dev 📝 Rascunho
Detalhe do Status de Dev Draft / Standardization in progress (specification under development at DTGWG; reference implementations underway in OpenVTC and the broader First Person Project ecosystem)
Proprietário Specification origin: Ayra Association (originating paper, January 2025). Standardization: Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group (DTGWG) — joint ToIP-DIF Working Group
País International (Ayra Association is a global trust-network governance association)
Ano de Início 2025
Stack N/A — specification, not implementation
Financiamento Specification work supported by sponsoring organizations of the DTGWG (ToIP, DIF, Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust, Customer Commons, Ayra Association); originating paper produced by Ayra Association
Última Investigação 1 de jul. de 2026

Domínios de Caso de Uso

Co-Creation & Knowledge

Semantic & Data Protocol Atributos

Origins Decentralized trust graph / Proof of social attestation (designed to extend the personhood verification provided by PHCs into a richer trust-graph structure that captures real-world relationships as cryptographic credentials)
Database N/A — credentials stored in user-controlled digital wallets; no centralized relationship database is part of the specification (this is a key architectural property — each member keeps their own portable subgraph of trust relationships)
Query Language N/A — credential exchange uses standard VC presentation and verification protocols
Data Formats W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model (JSON-LD by default; other serializations possible per the underlying VC spec); threshold-based ZKP presentations for relationship counts
Collaborative Live Editing N/A
Rich Text Editing N/A
Mobile Support N/A — credentials can be presented from any wallet on any platform; the specification is platform-agnostic
Web Support N/A — same as above
Native Apps N/A — same as above
Terms Free open standard (no licensing fees for adoption)
Funds N/A — open standard, no funding round
Based On W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model (the underlying credential framework VRCs extend); W3C Decentralized Identifiers (for the DIDs of the two parties in each relationship); Personhood Credentials (PHCs are a prerequisite — VRCs are issued between PHC holders); Verifiable Relationship Credentials paper, Ayra Association, January 2025 (originating specification); zero-knowledge proof cryptography (for threshold-based relationship-count presentation)
Semantic Web Compatibility Full (built on W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model, which uses JSON-LD as its primary serialization; VRC claims are expressed as RDF-compatible structured data)
Protocol Maturity / Standardization W3C Draft / DTGWG standardization track (Ayra Association paper January 2025; specification work ongoing in the Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group; expected to produce a formal W3C-track specification jointly with PHCs)
Vocabulary / Ontology Type Social relationships / Trust attestation (specifies a credential-type vocabulary for attesting verifiable peer-to-peer trust relationships between unique persons)
Usage Pattern Embedded in other protocols (VRCs are exchanged via standard VC issuance and presentation protocols such as DIDComm and OpenID4VC; the specification defines the semantic content of a particular credential type rather than its transport)