LFDT - Hiero

<p>With the move of the Hedera's code base to Hiero, the project expanded significantly in scope. The SDKs that are currently available are all coming with the limited scope to Hedera and the Hedera network. Additionally, some of the SDKs are not created in the best possible way for the underlying programming language. Therefore, SDK usage is from time to time hard to understand and developers often run into issues. With all the changes to Hiero over the last year, including the modularization of the consensus node and the support for custom services and transactions, the architecture and public API of the SDKs is outdated in several ways. While we want to provide a great developer experience for our users, the current SDKs are not suitable for the future.</p><p>Based on all these factors, we started to invest in prototyping a possible new architecture and API for the future of our SDKs. That work is currently named "SKD V3" and happens in the&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/hiero-ledger/sdk-collaboration-hub" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(9, 105, 218);">SDK collaboration hub of Hiero</a>. We currently define language agnostic APIs and language best practices for architecture and APIs of the future SDKs. Regarding general language agnostic API design, our&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/hiero-ledger/sdk-collaboration-hub/blob/main/guides/api-guideline.md" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(9, 105, 218);">API guideline</a>&nbsp;is a good starting point. Based on that guideline, we created a&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/hiero-ledger/sdk-collaboration-hub/tree/main/v3-sandbox/prototype-api" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(9, 105, 218);">draft of the new SDK architecture and APIs</a>.</p><p>As a next step we need to create PoCs for the new SDK architecture and APIs in multiple languages. The main goal of this mentorship program project is to:</p><ul><li>Create PoCs for the new SDK architecture and APIs in multiple languages.</li><li>Create a roadmap for the new SDK architecture and APIs.</li><li>Contribute to our guidelines and documentation to make the new SDK architecture and APIs more accessible to developers.</li><li>Check how AI (like Claude code or GitHub Co-Pilot) can be used as a helpful tool when working on SDK code with all our guidelines and documentation in context.</li></ul><h3>Learning Objectives</h3><ul><li>Understand Hiero and how Hiero based networks work.</li><li>Understand the Communication between a Hiero network (a consensus node and a mirror node) and a client.</li><li>Understand the current SDKs of Hiero and how they work.</li><li>Learn how to create future proof and non breaking APIs.</li><li>Learn how to use language features like generics and type inference to create the best possible SDKs.</li></ul><h3>Expected Outcome and Deliverables</h3><p>The successful completion of this project will result in at least 3 SDK V3 PoCs in multiple languages. Next to that we hope that contributions can be done to the general API guidelines and specifications.</p><p><br></p><p>Lean more at <a href="https://github.com/LF-Decentralized-Trust-Mentorships/mentorship-program/issues/71" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/LF-Decentralized-Trust-Mentorships/mentorship-program/issues/71</a></p>

<p>Open source collaboration platforms rely heavily on email-based identity and platform accounts for contributor attribution.</p><p>While widely adopted and convenient, this model has limitations: commit author metadata can be spoofed, contributor identity is fragmented across projects / ecosystems and hard to verify, and trust relationships are challenging to establish without additional verification on a person-to-person basis.</p><p>Current GitHub contribution workflows face multiple risks, including commit author impersonation and email-based identity spoofing.</p><p>These risks became even more relevant with advancements of Agentic AI capable of identity impersonation and "flooding" open source projects with low-quality or even malicious contributions.</p><p>From a technical perspective, there are many ways to mitigate these risks. However, not all of them are suitable for open source specifically – decentralized and transparent trust along with self-sovereign identity management are crucial factors.</p><p><br></p><p>Compromising on these principles can lead to a less trustworthy relationship between individual contributors and the projects, as well as it can create a higher entry barrier for new contributors.</p><p><br></p><p>We believe that decentralized identity concepts (<a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/did-1.1/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(9, 105, 218);">Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs)</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model-2.0/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(9, 105, 218);">Verifiable Credentials (VCs)</a>) can help to mitigate the spoofing and impersonation risks without compromising trust, providing a more secure and trustworthy way to recognize contributors.</p><p><br></p><p>This project proposes the development of a prototype (with long-term development potential) for contributor identity validation in Hiero that will leverage existing tools / applications available in Hiero Identity ecosystem, including the new&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/hiero-ledger/heka-identity-platform" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(9, 105, 218);">Heka Identity Platform</a>.</p><p><br></p><p>The prototype will be tested in a real-world scenario using one of Hiero open-source repositories (e.g.,&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/hiero-ledger/identity-collaboration-hub" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(9, 105, 218);">Identity Collaboration Hub</a>, DID SDKs, or Heka Identity Platform repo itself).</p><p><br></p><h3>Expected Outcome and Deliverables</h3><p>The successful completion of this project will result in a working prototype for contributor identity verification that can be used safely across Hiero repositories.</p><p>Expected deliverables include:</p><ul><li>A GitHub App capable of verifying contributor identity using DID and VC / VP</li><li>Implementation of a contributor onboarding workflow based on Heka Identity Platform</li><li>Implementation of pull request verification workflow leveraging contributor DID and Linked VP</li><li>Full integration demo with GitHub pull requests in one of the Hiero repositories</li><li>Documentation and high-level design for future development</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Lean more at <a href="https://github.com/LF-Decentralized-Trust-Mentorships/mentorship-program/issues/87" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/LF-Decentralized-Trust-Mentorships/mentorship-program/issues/87</a></p>