The standards that underpin digital identity on the web, the specifications that define how credentials are issued, verified and shared, aren’t handed down from above. They’re written by people: engineers, product leaders and technical experts who sit on working groups, debate proposals, and shape what the internet’s infrastructure becomes.
Scott Jones, Chief Product Officer at Realeyes, is now one of those people.
Scott holds W3C Invited Expert status on the Verifiable Credentials Working Group, contributing directly to the Verifiable Credentials Confidence Method specification. It’s a meaningful designation and one worth explaining.
Why W3C Matters to Digital Identity
The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is the international body responsible for the open standards the web runs on. For digital identity specifically, its influence is substantial.
WebAuthn, the specification behind passkeys is a W3C Recommendation, developed jointly with the FIDO Alliance. Verifiable Credentials, the framework for cryptographically signed digital credentials that can be selectively shared and independently verified, is a W3C standard. The Digital Credentials API, which defines how browsers and operating systems handle identity documents, is an active W3C working group effort. FIDO itself formally submitted its 2.0 specification to the W3C in 2015; the resulting WebAuthn standard became a W3C Recommendation in 2019.
These aren’t niche technical footnotes. They’re the foundations that modern identity infrastructure is built on and the standards being developed in W3C working groups today will shape how people prove who they are online for years to come.
What Invited Expert status means
W3C membership is typically an organisational commitment and a significant financial one, running to thousands of dollars annually. The Invited Expert designation operates differently. W3C extends it to specific individuals whose expertise a working group needs, independent of whether their employer holds a formal membership.
That distinction matters. Invited Expert status isn’t a paid tier or a membership category.
“Scott’s knowledge belonged in the room.”
For Realeyes, this is also the start of a longer commitment. As the opportunity around verifiable credentials and passkey-based authentication develops, Realeyes expects to graduate to full W3C organisational membership — deepening a contribution that is already active and ongoing.
Upstream by design
VerifEye is built on W3C standards, WebAuthn, Verifiable Credentials, and the specifications that make passkeys and reusable digital credentials possible. The strength of those standards directly affects what VerifEye can deliver: how interoperable it is, how future-proof, how trusted by the platforms and regulators that matter.
Having Realeyes’ Chief Product Officer in the working group means the practical perspective — what it actually takes to deploy verifiable credentials and passkey-based authentication at enterprise scale is being fed back into the specifications as they develop. That’s not a marketing position. It’s how open standards are supposed to work.
Realeyes is an active contributor to the W3C. Scott Jones, Chief Product Officer, holds Invited Expert status on the W3C Verifiable Credentials Working Group, contributing to the Verifiable Credentials Confidence Method specification.