Usage of rawV inside a VC

[frankbharath]

Hello Team,

We have rawVC, inside the VC of a participant. Correct me if I'm wrong, has the issuer digitally signed the credential using private key and this information is stored in the rawVC?

I was looking into the documentation, https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model-1.1/#proofs-signatures , it explicitly say proof which I don't find it the VC. Could it be because we are using JWT format for issuance?

Thanks,
Bharath

[paullatzelsperger]

yes, currently there is only a JWT VC Generator. Generally, we recommend the use of JWT VCs for several reasons, speed and simplicity being just two...

[frankbharath]

Thanks for the response :)

Can I understand that rawVC is a proof for JWT VC?

[paullatzelsperger]

no, the rawVc is the raw (unaltered) form of the signed VC. In the case of JWT VCs, that's a JWT, in the case of LDP-VCs, that's a JSON-LD structure including the proof. We need this for presentation, because VCs are signed with the issuer's private key, and the holder obviously doensn't have that, hence cannot reproduce the "raw" (=signed, unaltered) form.

Theoretically, if you take the VC, create the proof again using the issuer's private key, and compare the result to rawVc, they should be identical.

Note that the IdentityHub issuer currently cannot issue LDP-VCs (but you could have obtained LDP-VCs through out-of-band channels).

[frankbharath]

Okay. I have better understanding now. rawVC is a JWT that contains claims of a participant which is signed using issuer private key. From the point of verifier, the rawVC must be verified with the public key of issuer to make sure it has not been tampered.

Thanks

[paullatzelsperger]

the Decentralized Claims PRotocol is a good source for information.