Hyperledger Aries is infrastructure for blockchain-rooted, peer-to-peer interactions. It includes a shared cryptographic wallet (the secure storage tech, not a UI) for blockchain clients as well as a communications protocol for allowing off-ledger interaction between those clients.  This project consumes the cryptographic support provided by Hyperledger Ursa, to provide secure secret management and decentralized key management functionality.

Key Characteristics

• A blockchain interface layer (known as a resolver) for creating and signing blockchain transactions
• A cryptographic wallet that can be used for secure storage of cryptographic secrets and other information (the secure storage tech, not a UI) used to build blockchain clients
• An encrypted messaging system for allowing off-ledger interaction between those clients using multiple transport protocols.
• An implementation of ZKP-capable W3C verifiable credentials using the ZKP primitives found in Ursa.
• An implementation of the Decentralized Key Management System (DKMS) specification currently being incubated in Hyperledger Indy.
• A mechanism to build higher-level protocols and API-like use cases based on the secure messaging functionality described earlier.

Documentation

Project Management

JIRA issues:

• https://jira.hyperledger.org/browse/aries 

Repositories

https://github.com/hyperledger/aries

https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-rfcs

https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-cloudagent-python

https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-staticagent-python

All Aries repositories - https://github.com/hyperledger?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=aries&type=&language=

Communication

Mailing List

• https://lists.hyperledger.org/g/aries

Chat (for questions and ephemeral discussions)

• #aries

Meetings

Aries Working Group

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ARIES is your complete toolkit for decentralized identity solutions and digital trust.

• Issue, store and present verifiable credentials with maximum privacy preservation
• Establish confidential, ongoing communication channels for rich interactions
• Meet the requirements and regulations for government-level identities
• Create wallets and agents across mobile, enterprise and the cloud

Aries is futureproofed by supporting multiple protocols, credential types, ledgers and registries. It has frameworks in multiple development languages, with interoperability tools and profiles to help everything work together seamlessly.

Key Characteristics

Privacy

• Establish decentralized credential verification and decentralized connections—give the holder more control over their information, with no “phoning home”
• Support selective disclosure, so holders only have to share the minimum amount of information
• Support Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP), so something can be proven (e.g. over the age of majority) without revealing the information it’s based on (e.g. date of birth)

Confidential, Ongoing Connections

• Enjoy encrypted, decentralized peer-to-peer messaging (using DIDComm) by using confidential, ongoing relationships between parties
• Support more than just issuing and presenting credentials: proactively notify holders about revoked credentials, exchange messages, and much more

Ease of deployment

• Start using ready-to-use agent frameworks in Python, Rust, Go, JavaScript and others 
• Build on multiple companion projects to get started quickly, such as Aries Mobile Agent React Native (Aries Bifold) for an open-standards smartphone wallet

Flexibility

• Leverage High-level APIs so you can easily adapt your solution in the future
• Support multiple credential types, including Hyperledger AnonCreds and W3C VCs

Community

• Leverage a well-established community with a wide range of active contributors, from individuals to large-scale organizations

Learning resources

For those new to the Aries community, Trust over IP and verifiable credentials, Linux Foundation provides two courses about the concepts and technology:

• For a business perspective, please find a list of helpful links here.
• For a developer perspective, please find a list of helpful links here. 

Questions?

Join the Hyperledger Discord and check out one of the many Aries project channels. (Learn more about Hyperledger Discord here)

Join the Community

• Hyperledger Aries mailing list and archives 
• Hyperledger Discord Chat
• Hyperledger Code of Conduct
• Hyperledger Community Calendar

Community Meetings

For call details and agendas, see: Aries Working Group

Join this call to learn about or contribute to Aries. This complements the community's asynchronous collaboration and helps us keep everyone up-to-date and moving together.

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Discussion items: upcoming releases, current PRs, work that will generate future PRs, architecture changes that will impact downstream teams, project standards, best practices, design, etc.

See below for a list of links to active User Group Meetings.

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Repositories, Project Management, and Issue Tracking

All Aries projects use GitHub for receiving issues, receiving pull requests and tracking releases.

*Note that while the frameworks listed below are written in a specific, identified language, for the the business layer applications built on top of the frameworks can be implemented in any language.

For call details and agendas, see: Aries Working Group

Calendars

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You can also view a list of all Aries repositories.
You can find current status of Aries Interoperability between Aries frameworks and agents here. 

History

• Proposed by Nathan George

• Approved by the TSC on 2019-05-02

• Active status approved by the TSC on 25 FEB 2021