CAWG identity assertions

The Creator Assertions Working Group (CAWG) defines assertions that enable content creators to express individual and organizational intent about their content. The CAWG identity assertion enables a credential holder to prove control over a digital identity and to use that identity to document the content creator’s role(s) in a C2PA asset’s lifecycle.

Verified identities

As defined in the CAWG Identity Assertion technical specification,

Content creators may wish to document their role in creating an asset using common identity signals such as:

• Verified web sites
• Social media accounts
• Official ID documentation
• Professional accreditations
• Organizational affiliations

To facilitate the use of such identity signals, the content creator may use the services of a trusted third-party intermediary known as a identity claims aggregator to gather these signals and to restate them on their behalf.

The identity claims aggregator performs two important roles:

• It collects and verifies identity attestation claims from various identity providers such as social media sites and ID verification vendors.
• It creates a unique asset-specific credential that binds the identity attestation claims to a specific C2PA asset.

The following table describes the allowed values of the type property of verifiedIdentities array elements.

Value	Meaning
cawg.document_verification	The identity provider verified one or more government-issued identity documents presented by the content creator.
cawg.web_site	The content creator has proven control over a specific domain to the identity claims aggregator._
cawg.affiliation	The identity provider is attesting to the content creator’s membership in an organization. This could be a professional organization or an employment relationship.
cawg.social_media	The content creator has demonstrated control over an account (typically a social media account) hosted by the identity provider.
cawg.crypto_wallet	The content creator has demonstrated control over an account (typically a crypto-wallet) hosted by the identity provider.

note

The above table is based on the CAWG identity assertion technical specifications.

Terms used in the above table:

• content creator: The actor whose relationship to a C2PA asset is documented by an identity assertion. Typically, this will be the content creator or publisher, but not necessarily. This is a simplified example of a named actor, meaning the person, device, or software whose relationship to a C2PA asset is documented by an identity assertion, also referred to as a credential subject when identified by the subject field of a ToIP verifiable identifier.
• Identity provider: Organization or person that attests to the identity of the content creator; This may be the identity assertion generator, a third party contacted by the identity assertion generator, or the issuer of an identity credential that the identity assertion generator uses.
• Identity claims aggregator: Collects identity claims (attestations) regarding a content creator from various identity providers and can replay those identity claims into identity assertions on behalf of the content creator. This actor MAY be the same as the identity assertion generator.

Example

"assertions": [
  ...
  {
    "label": "cawg.identity",
    "data": {
      "@context": [
        "https://www.w3.org/ns/credentials/v2",
        "https://cawg.io/identity/1.1/ica/context/"
      ],
      "type": [
        "VerifiableCredential",
        "IdentityClaimsAggregationCredential"
      ],
      "issuer": "did:web:connected-identities.identity.adobe.com",
      "validFrom": "2025-04-29T17:34:44Z",
      "verifiedIdentities": [
        {
          "type": "cawg.social_media",
          "username": "xyz",
          "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/xyz",
          "verifiedAt": "2024-10-08T18:04:08Z",
          "provider": {
            "id": "https://instagram.com",
            "name": "instagram"
          }
        },
        {
          "type": "cawg.social_media",
          "username": "xyz",
          "uri": "https://www.behance.net/xyz",
          "verifiedAt": "2024-10-22T19:31:17Z",
          "provider": {
            "id": "https://behance.net",
            "name": "behance"
          }
        },
        {
          "type": "cawg.social_media",
          "username": "J Smith",
          "uri": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/xyz",
          "verifiedAt": "2024-10-08T18:03:41Z",
          "provider": {
            "id": "https://linkedin.com",
            "name": "linkedin"
          }
        },
        {
          "type": "cawg.social_media",
          "username": "xyz",
          "uri": "https://twitter.com/xyz",
          "verifiedAt": "2024-10-08T18:03:49Z",
          "provider": {
            "id": "https://twitter.com",
            "name": "twitter"
          }
        }
      ],
      "credentialSchema": [
        {
          "id": "https://cawg.io/identity/1.1/ica/schema/",
          "type": "JSONSchema"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
  ...
]