Referencing Trust Registry within a Verifiable Credential

Trust Registries are referenced within Accreditaiton Policies in the Verifiable Credential body. This enables Relying Parties to traverse the trust chain and verify that the issuer, accrediting entity (TAO) and Root of Trust (rTAO) are all legitimate entities.

Within the body of the Verifiable Credential, issuers will need to configure the termsOfUse section to reference DIDs or DID URLs of trust registry entries, for example:

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/credentials/v2",
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/credentials/examples/v2"
  ],
  "id": "http://university.example/credentials/3732",
  "type": ["VerifiableCredential", "ExampleDegreeCredential"],
  "issuer": "did:cheqd:testnet:c2f18b6b-32e2-48d1-a5a8-5f5d2d9798f0",
  "validFrom": "2010-01-01T00:00:00Z",
  "credentialSubject": {
    "id": "did:cheqd:testnet:b4902745-5b5b-423e-820a-0773b033f2b9",
    "degree": {
      "type": "ExampleBachelorDegree",
      "name": "Bachelor of Science and Arts"
  "termsOfUse": {
    "type": "AccreditationPolicy",
    "parentAccreditation": "did:cheqd:testnet:c2f18b6b-32e2-48d1-a5a8-5f5d2d9798f0/resources/58c01595-f884-4a3b-add4-8c691e16b8ee",
    "rootAuthorisation": "did:cheqd:testnet:c2f18b6b-32e2-48d1-a5a8-5f5d2d9798f0/resources/58c01595-f884-4a3b-add4-8c691e16b8ee",
    "trustFramework": "cheqd Governance Framework",
    "trustFrameworkId": "https://learn.cheqd.io/governance/start"
  }
}