About Creator Credentials

Motivation

The Creator Credentials project introduces decentralised digital identities to the cultural and creative industries, addressing a critical need for verifiable authenticity in digital media. The widespread availability and rapid dissemination of digital content present significant challenges for users attempting to verify the integrity, authenticity, and ownership of media assets. The lack of standardised attribution mechanisms contributes to the unchecked spread of misinformation, unauthorised use of copyrighted works, and the erosion of trust in online media.

While Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) frameworks offer potential solutions for improving content attribution and rights management, these technologies have historically remained inaccessible to creative communities. Existing SSI tools and applications are complex, require technical expertise, and impose high barriers to adoption. As a result, media organisations, creators, and rightsholders have lacked practical, easy-to-use solutions for securing their digital identities and ensuring accountability in an increasingly AI-driven landscape.

Goals

Creator Credentials has developed a user-centric digital identity framework tailored to the needs of creators, media professionals, and cultural institutions. The project simplifies the issuance and verification of Verifiable Credentials (VCs) and Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs), ensuring that digital media attribution is both cryptographically secure and publicly accountable.

The core components include:

• A credential issuance platform: A software application that can be used by media organisations, membership associations, collective management organisations (CMOs) and trust services to issue Verifiable Credentials to creators and rightsholders – their members –, ensuring clear attribution and accountability.

• A wallet for creators and rightsholders: The user application that provides a simple and secure wallet that allows creators and rightsholders to store, manage, and share their Verifiable Credentials. This ensures that their credentials are easily accessible and verifiable by third parties, such as media platforms, publishers, and other audiences, reinforcing trust and accountability in digital publishing.

Creator Credentials aims to establish a new role for public entities and organisations in digital media publishing. By integrating digital identity solutions with existing media infrastructures, the project enables public institutions, professional associations, and cultural organisations to serve as trust anchors in the verification of creator credentials and content authenticity. This shift introduces a new paradigm for trust and accountability, ensuring that digital publishing ecosystems are transparent, verifiable, and resistant to manipulation.