The digital economy is based on confidence—specifically, how confident people feel about conducting their work and lives online. While our world is highly connected, our online confidence is low. Privacy has been eroded, and we do not easily trust the identities of others online, nor what they send us. We need to address these issues and build online confidence for individuals and businesses without compromising on User Experience.
Developer communities recognized this new trust model could underpin an entire layer of Internet-scale digital trust infrastructure.
Initial efforts focused primarily on proving the technology side of the stack.
But customers began to seek real-world solutions.
This is when attention turns to the “other half” of the stack—the practical governance and policy questions that will drive business, legal, and social acceptance.
The result of which is the dual stack shown in the illustration.
Early versions of the ToIP stack reflected historical origins—technology on the left — real-world experience showed that governance should come first.
Implementing ToIP-based solutions should begin with business requirements and then move to policy requirements transparently communicated in governance frameworks.
Only then should you choose the technology components required to implement those policies.
