Bachelor

This repo contains a NTNU bachelor project in collaboration with Symfoni. The project is a demo of how EU Digital Wallet could be used when applying for unemployment benefits at NAV. It is built after the Self-Sovereign Identity model, meaning that the user is control of their own verifiable data. However, it is important to state that none of the sensitive verifiable data used in the application is real, therefore it can not be used in a real-life scenario. Nonetheless, it is a good demo for showcasing the flow of data in the Self-Sovereign Identity system.

Tools used

• Veramo, to manage verifiable data and anything related to the SSI model.
• React Native, as a framework for creating the web and phone application.
• Express.js, as a web framework for creating the API.
• Node.js, as the runtime environment.
• Infura, as an access point to the ethereum networks.
• Firestore, for saving data in a cloud database.
• Expo, for easily building the application.
• TypeScript, the main programming language used.
• Mocha, the testing framework.
• Husky, for managing modern Git hooks.

Installation

Prerequisites

Make sure that you have the Node.js runtime environment with support for typescript, see Node.js. Then install the Veramo client by typing,

npm install @veramo/cli -g

Lastly, make sure that you have installed the Expo client by typing,

npm install -g expo-cli

, and the EAS client,

npm install -g eas-cli

Dependencies

Install all required dependencies by running,

npm ci

If this does not work you can try,

npm i

However, keep in mind that this updates the dependencies.

Generate database keys and link to infura project

The local databases handled by the veramo API requires secret keys. The project also requires a link to a infura project to run. Both the keys and the infura project id must be set in a dotenv.env file, see dotenv-template.env for further guidance.

Test

To run the tests in this project, simply run,

npm run test

API

To run the api, type,

npm run dev

For API documentation, please refer to our published API documentation.

App

To run the application, use,

npm start

Follow the instructions given in the terminal.

Build

To build the application for the web, run,

expo build:web

For android and ios, run,

eas build

Again, ensure that you have the respective client installed by typing either,

npm install -g expo-cli

or

npm install -g eas-cli

Database

The demo is dependent on a Firebase database connection. Start by creating an account on Firebase, then create a project with a Firestore database. Then go to project settings to create and download a service account key JSON document, place it in the root folder, and name it serviceAccountKey.json. Alternatively, ask one of the developers on this project for access to their Firebase project and generate a service account key from there.

Messaging

The application uses DIDComm to send messages between agents/wallets. If you want to use this feature, you have to gas up the main did of each agent, then add a service key and service endpoints to the did document.

To gas up the DID, you have to compute its did address and fill it with gas by going to a website like Rinkeby Faucet. After giving the did gas, you have to update the did document on the blockchain with a service key and service endpoints. We recommend using the veramo library for this.

Verifiable registry

The demo is dependent on a verifiable registry, which for simplicity is a json file called verifiableRegistry.json. It consists of key-value pair where the key is the name of the agent and the value is its main DID address. See, verifiableRegistry.template.json, for further help. To gather the main DID addresses, use the APIs endpoints for fetching each agents main identifier, e.g, /symfoni/mainIdentifier/.

Connect smartphone to local server

The express server is run on a local machine unless it is chosen to be deployed somewhere. In order for a mobile phone to access the server that is running on a local computer it needs to know the IPV4 address of said computer. The IPV4 can be found by typing ipconfig on a windows machine, and ifconfig on either Linux or Mac. When the IPV4 address is found, replace the IPV4 string with your actual IPV4 address on line 11 in ./app/api.constants.ts.

Starting the demo

Start the demo by opening two terminals and typing,

npm start

, in both terminals. Choose the web build option in one terminal, and android/IOS in the other. When the project has successfully been built to each device, open a third terminal to spin up the server by typing,

npm run dev

That is it. Happy demoing. 🚀