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2. Context

The Gaia-X Association is working with other parties to enable the creation of infrastructure and data-driven ecosystems. This document explains the core elements that compose the Gaia-X Trust Framework and defines how they relate to each other at the functional level in the Gaia-X model. Furthermore, the document explains how the Gaia-X Trust Framework integrates with implementations of Infrastructure and Data Space-specific services.

2.1 Gaia-X as a member of the Data Spaces Business Alliance (“DSBA”)

Gaia-X together with the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA), the FIWARE Foundation and the Big Data Value Association has formed the Data Spaces Business Alliance to provide a comprehensive and complementary stack of specifications and OSS components that enable and create value out of distributed digital (data) ecosystems.

Gaia-X in the context of an OpenDEI Data Space

The DSBA members continue to converge and integrate their respective artefacts to provide a comprehensive, interoperable and scalable set of solutions, but they remain open to the integration of other solutions.

2.2 Gaia-X Trust Framework

Gaia-X provides the Trust Framework, which ensures that all participants in the Gaia-X Ecosystem are adhering to the policy rules agreed between the participants of the Ecosystem itself.

The Gaia-X Trust Framework defines the process of going through and validating the set of automatically enforceable rules to achieve the minimum level of compatibility in terms of:

  • syntactic correctness;
  • schema validity;
  • cryptographic signature validation;
  • attribute value consistency;
  • attribute value verification.

The claims are all contained in verifiable credentials, independently of who is performing the assessment.

Whenever possible, the claims validation is done either by using publicly available open data and performing tests or using data from Trusted Data Sources as defined in the following sections.

The Gaia-X Trust Framework provides the interfaces to various technologies connecting data (ensuring data sovereignty) and services, which help to establish ecosystems, such as catalogues, identity solutions, and marketplaces.

The underlying trust is provided by Gaia-X Credentials.