Headless DID Wallet & Credential Lifecycle PoC

Traditional decentralized identity (DID) solutions often rely heavily on mobile applications (like the Veridian Wallet) for key management and credential storage. This R&D project was initiated to prove that the entire Verifiable Credential lifecycle—from issuance to presentation—could be fully automated in a 'headless' Node.js backend environment. By reverse-engineering the interactions between the mobile client and the KERI Cloud Agent, I developed a suite of robust backend services capable of generating identities, resolving OOBI connections, and orchestrating the complex IPEX (Identity Protocol for EXchange) message flow. The ultimate success of the PoC was successfully receiving and cryptographically anchoring a chained credential (a Child vLEI dependent on a Parent QVI) entirely through automated backend scripts.

Key Features

• Headless Identity Management: Programmatic creation and management of secure digital identities (DIDs) without requiring user intervention or a mobile UI.
• Cloud Agent Integration: Automated generation and resolution of OOBIs to establish secure, peer-to-peer connections between identities.
• Automated IPEX Handling: Built backend services to listen for, parse, and cryptographically sign incoming credential exchange offers.
• Chained Credential Resolution: Engineered sequence logic to handle complex 'Chain of Trust' dependencies, ensuring Parent credentials (QVI) are anchored before Child credentials (vLEI).

Key Takeaways

• Mastered the internal mechanics of the KERI (Key Event Receipt Infrastructure) architecture and the IPEX protocol.
• Gained valuable experience reverse-engineering open-source mobile wallet codebases (Veridian) to adapt client-side logic for secure backend execution.
• Solved complex asynchronous cryptographic challenges, specifically mitigating 500 Server Errors caused by out-of-order credential anchoring in chained vLEI structures.
• Deepened understanding of how backend DID infrastructure can integrate with the broader Cardano ecosystem for automated credential issuance.