In November 2022, we officially launched the Trinsic v2 platform (also known as Trinsic Ecosystems) as our exclusive platform for new users. We’ve invested tremendous resources into developing Trinsic v2 in place of our v1 platform (Trinsic Studio and our legacy APIs), largely due to our concerns with v1’s dependencies on the Hyperledger Indy + Aries bundle of technologies. We designed Trinsic v2 to be superior in performance, scalability, and extensibility.
Up to this point, we have continued to support Trinsic v1. However, Sovrin Foundation announced updates to its policies which affects all existing Trinsic v1 users. Due to these policy updates, we have made the following decisions:
- All v1 users will need to migrate any Sovrin StagingNet activity by March 31, 2023.
- We will sunset the entire Trinsic v1 platform on September 15, 2023.
For more context surrounding these decisions, keep reading.
An update in Sovrin policies
Sovrin’s updated policy announcement includes a declaration that they intend to reset the StagingNet (renamed “TestNet”) on May 1st, 2023. This means that existing applications, integrations, and credentials on that network will be broken, as all existing DIDs, schemas, etc. will be removed on that date.
In addition to this removal, Sovrin is raising the prices of StagingNet by 10x. Up to this point, Trinsic has covered all StagingNet costs on behalf of our customers to support Sovrin. Because the new 10x-higher StagingNet ledger fees are not sustainable, we will be removing the option to use Sovrin StagingNet going forward. For anyone wondering which network they should use, we recommend the following:
- For non-production testing, development, or prototyping work, we recommend Indicio TestNet.
- For production credentials and verification, we recommend continuing to use Sovrin MainNet.
Due to the changes listed above, all Trinsic v1 users will need to migrate any Sovrin StagingNet activity by March 31. This will give us a 30-day buffer before Sovrin resets the StagingNet on May 1st. We also encourage you to migrate v1 traffic away from Trinsic v1 and Sovrin MainNet as soon as possible. We’re willing to work as closely with you as needed to migrate your activity to Trinsic v2 and minimize any disruption to your current users.
This is an important demonstration of the risk that Hyperledger Indy networks with centralized governance pose. With the vote of a few Trustees, all applications built on Sovrin StagingNet are compromised. If they felt so inclined, they could 10x the prices of MainNet if they wanted to—or make a host of other changes that could affect your product.
Because Trinsic v1 is based on Hyperledger Indy/Aries, which is tightly coupled and largely dependent on Sovrin, we’re limited in what we can do. This dependency is a primary reason we developed Trinsic v2, which is DID method agnostic and supports a variety of alternative blockchains and ledgerless solutions, including ION (plus, it still supports Sovrin for public DIDs as well). We urge our v1 partners to consider migrating to Trinsic v2.
We want to help you in this process. For support in migrating to a more stable development environment, please contact us. If you have additional questions about this announcement, do not hesitate to reach out.
