LinkedClaims

Semantic & Data Protocol

An open specification from DIF Labs defining the minimum requirements for a claim to be linkable to other claims: a claim MUST have a subject that is any valid URI, MUST itself carry a well-formed URI identifier, and MUST be cryptographically signed. Because a claim's subject may itself be a claim, endorsements, corroborations, disputes and ratings can layer on top of one another to form a cross-domain web of trust. LinkedClaims does not replace existing credential formats — it defines profiles and mappings so that existing data structures can be linked together without changing their native formats.

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Details

License Open specification under DIF process; feedback via GitHub Issues at decentralized-identity/labs-linkedclaims. No licence stated on the specification page
Dev Status 📝 Draft
Owner Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) — Linked Claim Incubation Lab. Editors: Golda Velez, Andor Kesselman. Authors: Golda Velez, Agnes Koinange, Phil Long. Associated with the LinkedTrust project
Owner - List
  • Decentralized Identity Foundation
Governing Body DIF (Linked Claim Incubation Lab)
Country International (DIF is globally distributed; LinkedTrust is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, USA with a global team)
Stack Language-agnostic specification. Examples use JSON-LD with Ed25519Signature2020 proofs; a minimal conformant claim is plain JSON with id, subject and signature
Funding Foundation — developed within DIF's Labs programme; no separate funding disclosed
Last Investigated Jul 31, 2026

Topology view

This tool in the centre and the things it is directly related to. Each line names the kind of relationship.

Topology view: LinkedClaimsThis tool in the centre and the things it is directly related to. Each line names the kind of relationship.LinkedClaimsActivityPub (Aims to interoperate with, Basis for)ActivityPubJSON-LD (Composes with, Conforms to)JSON-LDVCs (Composes with)VCsDIDs (Conforms to)DIDsDecentralized Identity Foundation (Developed by)DecentralizedIdentity Fou…
  • ActivityPub (Tool): Aims to interoperate with, Basis for
  • JSON-LD (Tool): Composes with, Conforms to
  • VCs (Tool): Composes with
  • DIDs (Tool): Conforms to
  • Decentralized Identity Foundation (Organization): Developed by

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Use Case Domains

Platform Evolution & Sovereignty

Affordances

Provenance tracking Interoperable formats

Semantic & Data Protocol Attributes

Owner - List
  • Decentralized Identity Foundation
Origins Web of trust / credibility assessment — motivated by the observation that cryptographic signing and blockchain validation alone do not establish whether a claim about the real world is credible, and that multiple projects had independently converged on the same addressable-claim pattern without a shared standard
Database N/A — defines claim structure, not storage. Claims are retrieved from their URIs; a claim may be public or access-controlled, and private claims may be held in a wallet with public validations pointing at them
Query Language N/A — no query language defined; claims are dereferenced by URI
Data Formats JSON at minimum (id, subject, signature); optionally JSON-LD with @context, and MAY be a W3C Verifiable Credential or similar credential format. Optional fields include statement, effectiveDate, source with digestMultibase, respondAt, aspect and confidence
Collaborative Live Editing N/A — claim format specification
Rich Text Editing N/A — a claim MAY carry a narrative statement, but no rich text model is defined
Mobile Support N/A — specification; private claims are described as wallet-held, implying mobile wallet contexts
Web Support Yes — claims are URI-addressable and retrieved over the web
Native Apps N/A — specification
Terms Free / open specification; no fees
Funds Unknown — no figures published
Based On W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DID Core) for signer identification; RFC 3986 (URI syntax); optionally W3C Verifiable Credentials. Related work in progress: Progressive Trust, digest Multibase Hashlink, and an ActivityPub-compatible inbox
Semantic Web Compatibility Partial to Full depending on profile — the minimal conformant form is plain JSON with no @context and is therefore not RDF-interpretable. The advanced form uses JSON-LD with an @context and MAY be a W3C Verifiable Credential, in which case it is RDF-compatible. The specification does not mandate JSON-LD
Protocol Maturity / Standardization Draft — a DIF Labs incubation specification, not a DIF ratified standard and not submitted to a formal standards body. Sections remain marked TBD and the document ends mid-topic. Reference implementation described as in development
Vocabulary / Ontology Type Trust / Attestation linking — a minimal structural vocabulary rather than a domain ontology. It specifies what makes a claim linkable (addressable subject, addressable identifier, cryptographic signature) and leaves claim semantics to whatever profile or credential vocabulary is layered on top. The specification defines the concept of a LinkedClaim profile for mapping existing data structures onto the model
Usage Pattern Embedded in other protocols and mapped onto existing formats — the specification's stated approach is that the LinkedClaim pattern already exists in several independent projects, and that defining profiles or mappings for those existing data structures lets them link together without changing their native formats. An ActivityPub-compatible inbox for replies to claims is identified as related work

Relationships

How this tool connects to other tools and organizations, from relationships reviewed by the OpenHaven data steward. They describe how projects connect, not how good they are.

Aims to interoperate with
Conforms to
Developed by
  • Decentralized Identity Foundation
Composes with
Basis for