Hyperledger Aries allows trusted online peer-to-peer interactions based on decentralized identities and verifiable credentials. Aries includes a protocol definition, tools, and reference implementations. The Aries protocol supports identities rooted in a variety of distributed ledgers or blockchains. This approach to identity is often called Self Soverign Identity (SSI).
Key components of an Aries solution are:
Aries is a young project that is maturing quickly. Documentation and links are often out-of-date.
The most consistently maintained guide for new developers is the one included in the Aries Cloud Agent Python (ACApy):
https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-cloudagent-python/tree/master/docs/GettingStartedAriesDev
There is also an EdX course here:
https://www.edx.org/course/identity-in-hyperledger-aries-indy-and-ursa
The Aries project contains a number of repos, which can be grouped into some important categories.
Most developers who want to solve business problems should start with an agent. The Aries project provides some open source agents, but there are other Aries compatible agents available through their developers.
If none of the off-the-shelf agents work for your use case, you should look at developing your own agent using one of the language frameworks.
The Aries project provides some useful tools for developing agents and testing that they are compatible with other agents in the ecosystem.
Coming Soon There are also a set of shared open source libraries that provide C-callable APIs that can be used by agents and frameworks to support the Aries protocols.
- Aries Key Management: Functions for managing keys, including storage plugins.
- Aries Verifiable Data Registry Interface: An interface for verifying data agianst an underlying ledger.
- Aries Util: Utility functions for Aries communication, such as message packing.
If you want to understand the theory and the open standards that these agents and frameworks implement, then you should refer to the Aries protocol documents:
You can raise issues using the GitHub issue tracker in each Aries repository. Pull requests are appreciated; please review CONTRIBUTING.md for the repository to which you want to contribute.
You can reach other Aries developers:
- in the RocketChat channel #aries,
- on the mailing list,
- or in the Aries Working Group weekly call.
Aries grew out of the work in Hyperledger Indy to create technologies for managing decentralized identity. Indy provides a specific blockchain purpose-built for identity. The tools created in Indy for building agents are being migrated to Aries, and extended to be blockchain-agnostic. Functionality related to the Indy ledger will remain in Indy.
If you are already using Indy SDK to build a decentralized identity solution, you can keep using it knowing that it will continue to be maintained while the Aries tools mature. When the Indy SDK is deprecated, a reasonable transition process will be communicated.