Providing an enduring solution for global identity requires significant effort and careful planning. The Sovrin Foundation exists to provide the human governance and trust frameworks that will be needed to establish ground rules and ensure the integrity of the network. To be effective at this task, the Sovrin Foundation has been designed to establish trust through transparency, diffusion, and neutrality.

The Sovrin Foundation has intentionally invited board members to represent expertise from across multiple industries and geographies, ensuring that special interests – whether commercial, governmental, or otherwise – do not unduly influence decisions. Our intent is to devise a process so that the elected Board of Trustees will be representative of the people and organizations who own identities on the Sovrin network. Furthermore, the Technical Governance Board will oversee the evolution of the open source code run by each node.

Sovrin Foundation is a non-profit. We don’t actually own the network – no one does, much like the Internet itself. The Sovrin network is public: everyone can get a Sovrin identity. Individuals and organizations own and control their identities. The Sovrin network is permissioned: the infrastructure for ensuring consensus on identity transactions is provided by carefully vetted and permissioned stewards who independently own and operate their nodes on the network. These combine to form a system of checks and balances that earns trust through action rather than promises.

Identity for all – Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is an identity that is 100% owned and controlled by an individual or organization. No one else can read it, use it, turn it off, or take it away without its owner’s explicit consent. This simple form of identity is private, extremely secure, and goes where you go. This will enable trusted interactions to occur between individuals, institutions, and businesses.