Method and apparatus for issuing or invalidating digital attribute certificates

A non-transitory computer readable medium bearing computer readable digital attribute certificate invalidation instructions for a member entity programmable device, these instructions arrange to execute the steps of:

• a. receiving and transmitting a certification request and evidence information to a member entity, the evidence information demonstrating possession of an attribute to be certified by the candidate entity with the member entity possessing an entity-specific attribute certificate signed via private/public key pairs that attests to an ability of the member entity to assess the possession of the attribute by the candidate entity, the attribute to be certified being any one or combination of the possession by the candidate entity of a skill or knowledge, meeting of a standard of behavior, possession of a physical or intangible resource, the successful competition of an assessment process, the meeting of a threshold performance measurement, the possession of the ability to assess one or more attributes of other entities, and/or the meeting of the standards of a professional or certification body,
• b. soliciting and transmitting at least one pledge from the member entity, the pledge transmitted being a cryptographically secured digital pledge to certify possession of the attribute of the candidate entity based on the evidence information, the pledge including or identifying an entity-specific attribute certificate signed via private/public key pairs awarded to the member entity that attests to an ability of the member entity to assess the possession of the attribute by the candidate entity, the pledge including or being associated with an amount of digital currency, and receiving an indication determining if the member entity has been identified as a contracted member based on the amount of digital currency and/or entity-specific attribute certificate included or identified by the pledge transmitted, contracted members being a subset of all member entities to which the certification request and evidence information were transmitted,
• c. if the member entity is identified as a contracted member soliciting and transmitting at least one assessment report prepared by the member entity that indicates an assessment by the member entity of the possession of the attribute by the candidate entity based on the evidence information,
• d. receiving and presenting assessment reports prepared by the subset of contracted members to the member entity,
• e. soliciting and transmitting a certification vote from the member entity to determine if a digital attribute certificate signed via private/public key pairs is to be issued and stored on a distributed, cryptographically secured distributed, cryptographically secured block chain database in response to the received certification request and evidence information, and
• f. receiving a plurality of certification votes from member entity's and issuing an entity-specific attribute certificate signed via private/public key pairs based on the votes received, and distributing entity-specific attribute certificate signed via private/public key pairs from the distributed, cryptographically secured block chain database to a requesting entity, wherein the digital attribute certificate encodes reference to any one or combination of the certification request, the evidence information, the cryptographically secured digital pledge, the assessment report, and the determination vote.