Trust Registries
What They Are
A Trust Registry is the authoritative source for governance within a VTC or VTN. It maps DIDs to roles, determines acceptable issuers, defines policies, and handles revocations.
Critically, trust registries are what determine whether a Membership Credential qualifies as a Personhood Credential — it’s the governance layer, not the credential structure, that enforces personhood guarantees.
What They Do
Trust registries manage:
- Role assignments — who is an initiator, trust anchor, member, identity verification provider (IDVP), etc.
- Issuer policies — which DIDs are authorized to issue which credential types
- Personhood enforcement — which VTCs enforce real human personhood and one-membership-per-person rules
- Revocation — which credentials are still valid
- Policy definitions — community-specific trust policies and thresholds
Why They Matter
The DTG credential system is deliberately governance-agnostic at the credential level — a PHC is structurally identical to any other VMC. The trust registry is where governance decisions live. This separation means:
- The same credential format works across communities with different governance models
- Personhood guarantees can vary by community (different verification standards)
- Policy changes don’t require re-issuing credentials
- Verifiers check the trust registry to determine what level of assurance a credential provides
Current Status
The DTG specification (v0.3) references trust registries as a core concept but explicitly marks their schema and APIs as out of scope. The exact implementation is left to individual communities and networks.
See also: personhood-credential, verifiable-trust-community, verifiable-trust-network