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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 in the context of a DSBA Data Space implementation

The following illustration refers to the cooperation between Gaia-X, IDSA, FIWARE and the BDVA, who together formed the “Data Space Business Alliance”. The figure shows how the work of each association can be used to create Data Spaces:

Gaia-X in the context of an OpenDEI Data Space

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.