SSI acts as the underlying identity- and communication protocol between agents on MOBIX’ Deep Parking Use Case at the IAA Mobility. It allows for the integration of Verifiable Credentials and communication via private and encrypted communication channels between agents.
From September 7th to September 12th, 2021 the IAA Mobility, the largest automobile fair in the world, takes place in Munich, Germany. A large variety of car manufacturers, suppliers, and micromobility providers show their latest and future products and offer live demonstrations. In coordination with Bosch, htw saar, Fetch.ai, Ocean Protocol, and Datarella, MOBIX will demonstrate its new micromobility use case “Deep Parking”.
The use case offers a combination of a dynamic search and booking of private parking lots in the city center of Munich that were offered by individuals or private companies. Additionally, user have the possibility to seamlessly rent a micromobility service like an E-scooter to get to the target destination that might not be available by car. Providers of parking lots will get rewarded with a parking fee which is paid out in the MOBX token that resides on the Fetch.ai Blockchain.
Self-Sovereign Identity
Privacy plays a central role in the MOBIX ecosystem, therefore we chose to implement an SSI ecosystem based on the Aries Framework Go including public DIDs that are registered on the IDunion ledger.
The user will have a MOBIX Wallet that contains a mobile SSI Agent to connect to the selected car and to find and reserve a parking lot. The cars also run on their own SSI agents deployed on Raspberry Pis inside the car. MOBIX has prepared three parking lots in the city center that are managed by a website that are called the “Parking Hub” which broadcasts the availability of parking lots to Fetch.Ai’s SOEF. The parking hub is the only agent that issues a Verifiable Credential to attests the successful reservation of a parking lot and issues it directly to the car. To make the credential verifiable, the parking hub hosts a public DID on the IDunion ledger.
When the car approaches the parking space, a gate control unit requests a credential presentation of the reservation and verifies the credential signature with the public key that is registered on IDunion. After the car arrives in the parking lot and the driver exits the car, the connected agents revoke their connections and essentially forget that they ever interacted with each other. A very similar approach is implemented for the micromobility solution where the user connects with e-scooters and provides credentials issued by the micromobility hub.
The DIDs that are natively provided by Aries Framework Go are derived from the did:peer method. This DID method generates each DID for each counterpart individually to create private and encrypted communication channels between the actors. This avoids the possibility of correlation of connections on the verifier’s side. Furthermore, old connections are automatically revoked.
Summary
SSI plays a central role within MOBIX “Deep Parking” Use case the entire MOBIX ecosystem. This implementation allows for the trustless exchange of Verifiable Credentials while fully respecting the user’s privacy. It uses well-known standards like DIDs and Verifiable Credentials and anchors the public DIDs on the IDunion ledger. Furthermore, this design is scalable as any actor can run as an Aries Framework Go agent independent of their underlying infrastructure and be added to the network. If you are interested in seeing this in person, show up on the IAA and contact us. We are excited to explain it to you on-site.