The objective of the KERI project is to create the infrastructure for the trust-spanning layer of the Internet in the most open-source software license. The foundation should provide the financial resources to overcome any barriers.
Objective
The foundation’s long-term objective is to establish a not-for-profit organization that generates funds. This organization will ensure the security and reputation of the KERI Suite while supporting its user base and donors with open-source code, various services, and transparent business relationships with companies.
Mature the tooling
With financial resources secured and the foundation’s structure established, we can focus on maturing the tooling (proof of concept). Allocating funds takes precedence over all other considerations, such as supporting the open-source base. Our primary goal is to reduce complications by addressing the 5 W’s: Wallet, Witness, Watcher, Web, and Wizard.
Management
The members of the KERI Foundation management are: Samuel Smith, Karla McKenna, and Henk van Cann.
Samuel Smith
Samuel received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Brigham Young University in 1991. He spent 10 years at Florida Atlantic University, reaching full professor status before retiring to become an entrepreneur.
Read more
Dr. Smith is a serial entrepreneur and an active participant in open standards development and governance.
He has over 100 refereed publications in the areas of machine learning, autonomous vehicle systems, automated reasoning, and decentralized systems. He was principal investigator on numerous federally funded research projects.
Henk van Cann
Organizer KERICONF26 in Lehi, Utah. Other activities: KERI Suite Documentation and Education, Spec-Up-T at TrustoverIP
Read more
Henk bundles operations under LFDT-TrustoverIP, WebofTrust, and Blockchainbird.
- Provides free open source toolkits
- Organises Meetups to spread the word of decentralised assets and identifier innovation.
Karla McKenna
Karla McKenna is an international standards specialist in financial services. Ms. McKenna is Managing Director, GLEIF Americas, as well as Head of Standards for the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation. Ms. McKenna led the development of the digital use of the LEI, concentrating on the implementation of the verifiable LEI (vLEI), and is also responsible for facilitating the development and implementation of GLEIF standards and leveraging international standards to maximize data quality and the operational integrity of the Global LEI System.
Read more
Ms. McKenna chaired the International Organization for Standardization Technical Committee 68 (ISO/TC 68), Financial services, from 2006 to 2018, and continues ISO work in the areas of standards interoperability and regulatory use of international standards as co-convenor of the TC 68 Standards Advisory Group.
Ms. McKenna is a member of the inaugural Boards of the Eurofiling Foundation and the KERI Foundation, the Steering Committee of Trust over IP, and the transitional Board of the Ayra Foundation; is the Immediate Past Chair of the Securities Market Practice Group (SMPG) and also has served on the Boards of XBRL International, the International Securities Association for Institutional Trade Communication (ISITC) and the Accredited Standards Committee X9 (ASC X9).
More information about:
Identity and Security
The problem with Internet security is that it’s based on flawed identity, and security experts don’t understand identity well enough to fix it.
The problem with Internet identity is that it’s based on flawed security, and identity experts don’t understand security well enough to fix it.
KERI’s design reflects a sufficient understanding of both security and identity to fix both Internet identity and Internet security at the same time.
~ Samuel Smith, August 2024