FAQ
Who owns the Bedrock Business Utility (BBU)?¶
No single organization owns the BBU.
The Bedrock Consortium is a Linux Foundation project that supports the operation of the Bedrock Business Utility (the “Utility” or "BBU"), an independent self-governed and self-sustainable public identity utility.
The members of the Bedrock Consortium represent a collection of international private sector companies and other organizations that utilize, operate and manage the Utility. The Bedrock Consortium, a directed fund of the Linux Foundation (“LF”), serves the purpose of raising, budgeting and spending funds in support of the Utility and the Bedrock Technical Project , which is tasked with the mission of supporting the technical needs of the Utility.
LF Governance Networks, Inc., a Delaware non-profit corporation, supports the Utility by executing the various agreements relating to the management of, or transacting with, the Utility.
What are the key markets that would use the BBU?¶
The BBU is designed to be a public access utility for all industries and sectors. Participation in the BUU is not restricted to any set of industries.
How does a business benefit from joining the BBU?¶
We know that convening ecosystems is time consuming and challenging. The BBU is an established digital trust ecosystem supplying a permissioned infrastructure (open read access but only authorized users will have write access), to foster accelerated ecosystem adoption eliminating the need for individual organizations to “grow their own” – reducing cost and complexity and improving speed to market when implementing a solution.
Becoming a member of this network affords businesses a low cost option to access a trusted, decentralized ledger that enforces privacy regulation, a sustainable financial model, collective ownership and adherence to open standards and protocols of ToIP as well as access to a wide range of ecosystem partners.
- Read access to the Bedrock Business Utility is open to all types of entities.
- Write access is limited to members good standing within the Consortium.
As contributors to the infrastructure of a public identity utility, BBU members are entitled to unlimited or limited write access rights depending on membership level. Membership rates are determined by the selected membership level (e.g. Governing, Operational or Subscriber). Details can be found in Pricing.
Who makes up the governing board?¶
The Governing Board is comprised of representatives from members as outlined in the Bedrock Consortium’s Charter. Details can be found in the Bedrock Consortium Participation Agreement.
How will the BBU onboard legitimate financially sounds members?¶
The BBU Governance Framework outlines membership qualification policies for the onboarding of financial stability and legitimacy companies. These qualified members will provide the infrastructure for the BUU.
The Membership Committee is tasked with the procedures and processes for running membership campaigns to keep membership quantity and quality stable for sustainability of the public identity utility.
What service level requirements will a member be required to adhere to?¶
Each member must sign a set of legal agreements that cover the obligations, restrictions and other concerns associated with the role a member will play within the consortium. Member requirements by role are described in detail Participation and Utility Agreements.
Who will be able to access the network?¶
The BBU, a public identity utility, is publicly accessible for members and non-members via read access only APIs. Members will have the ability to write to BBU . Write access entitlements will depend on membership type.
Who controls what is written to the BBU?¶
A Transaction Endorser is a data processor that works on behalf of a data controller, known as a Transaction Author. A Transaction Endorser is responsible for adhering to the Endorser Technical and Organizational Policies as well as all relevant Bedrock Consortium Ledger Access Policies. A Trust Assurance Framework is also used to ensure that a Transaction Endorser can supply evidence of stated compliance with these policies and any relevant accreditations, including certificates, attestations, or reports resulting from accredited third-party audits, such as ISO 27001, SSAE SOC 2, or other industry standards.
How is the BBU different from the Sovrin Foundation?¶
The goals of the BBU are based on a number of motivating factors. To this end, the BBU strives to:
- Enforce permissioned-writes with contractual instruments that will conform to privacy regulations such as GDPR.
- Maintain financial sustainability of the consortium members without the use of cryptographic tokens.
- Establish a governing board so that no single organization owns the public identity utility.
- Require adherence to specified open standards and protocols
Why is the BBU not using a crypto/token payment model?¶
The BBU will operate on token-free economics as the risks and sustainability of a public write token payment model have yet to be proven.
What agreements is a member required to sign to join the BBU?¶
Each member must sign a set of legal agreements that cover the obligations, restrictions and other concerns associated with the role a member will play within the consortium. Member requirements by role are described in detail Participation and Utility Agreements.
How much does it cost to be a member?¶
Membership rates will be determined by the selected membership level (e.g. Governing, Operational or Subscriber). Details can be found in Pricing.
Who is responsible for hosting and managing a node?¶
Any member of the Bedrock Business Utility that is required to host a utility infrastructure node is considered a Steward and is responsible for the financial demands of hosting a node. Such expenditures are considered out-of-pocket expenses and are not related to the members annual membership obligations. See membership types and Member Technical and Organizational Policies.
What are the participation requirements for members with respect to working groups?¶
Governing and Operational members will be required to assign participation of appropriately skilled resource(s) on as part of committees/working groups as well as the technical project. Subscribers are not required to fulfill such requirements. See membership types
What is a financially incentive for a Steward to continue long-term participation?¶
Each participating member will need to make an annual decision on the ROI of their investment.
It is assumed that some members will charge their clients for access to their entitlement transactions while others may not charge and include such access as a perk/benefit.
How can we ensure that node hosting remains diverse?¶
The BBU Governance Framework outlines a set of diversity goals and makes suggestions for how these goals can be achieved. See Infrastructure Diversity Guidelines.
What types of data can be written to the ledger?¶
The BBU has strict ledger data policies that restrict the type of data that can be written to the ledger so that compliance risks with GDPR, CCPA and other privacy regulations are mitigated.
What if my organization wants to establish its own network as part of the Digital Trust Marketplace?¶
In collaboration with ToIP Utility Foundry Working Group, organizations can establish independent self-governed and self-sustainable public utilities, at layer one of ToIP Architecture. The BBU is an example of a public identity utility. Participation in the BBU would allow for an organization to gain familiarity and benefits from a cross0-industry public identity utilities before tackling the challenge of convening their own utility.
Will other networks/utilities be able to connect into the BBU?¶
The ToIP Foundation establishes human trust between peers—trust between real-world individuals and organizations and the things with which they interact (devices, sensors, appliances, vehicles, buildings, cities, etc.). The BBU is an example of a public identity utility at layer one of the ToIP Architecture. The BBU is not connected to any other public identity utilities but it can be trusted by one or more ToIP Ecosystem Projects.
The BBU and similar public identity utilities are used by verifiers who seek to perform cryptographic verification check processing against immutable decentralized identifiers (DIDs). These public identity utilities do not communicate with one-another.