Validation Policies Reference

This reference documents the validation policies supported by the validator service. These policies are the rules and checks that the validator applies to your credentials and presentations during validation.

Available Validation Policies

The validator service implements the following policies for credential and presentation validation:

Policy	Description	Key Function
Credential Query	Validates credential queries and presentation submissions	Ensures presentations satisfy their credential query requirements
Trusted Issuer	Validates issuer trust through certificate chains	Verifies credentials are issued by trusted entities

Configuration

Each policy can be individually configured through the validator configuration. For detailed configuration options for all policies, see the Configuration Reference.

Tip

Start with the default configuration and adjust only the options you need to change. This ensures you maintain security while customizing for your specific requirements.

Policy Execution Order

The validator executes policies in a specific order to ensure efficient validation:

1. Credential Format Policy - First validates that credentials can be parsed and are well-formed
2. Secondary Policies - Only executed if credential format validation succeeds:
   • Credential Query Policy - Validates query satisfaction
   • Trusted Issuer Policy - Validates issuer trust

If the credential format policy fails, secondary policies are skipped to avoid processing invalid credentials.

Validation Results

Policy validation results include:

• Success - The policy check passed
• Warning - The policy found minor issues that don’t necessarily invalidate the credential
• Error - The policy check failed, indicating the credential is invalid

Error Handling

Each policy defines how to handle different error scenarios, with configurable actions:

Action	Description	Effect on Validation
valid	Treat the scenario as valid	Allows validation to continue
warning	Generate a warning	Validation continues with warning in result
error	Generate an error	Validation fails with error in result

Policy Types

The validator policies can be categorized into different types:

Query Validation

• Credential Query - Validates that presentations satisfy credential query requirements

Trust Validation

• Trusted Issuer - Validates issuer trust through certificate chain verification

Supported Standards

The validator policies support validation across multiple standards:

Standard	Organization	Credential Format Policy	Credential Query Policy	Trusted Issuer Policy
W3C Verifiable Credentials	W3C	✅	✅	❌
IETF Digital Credentials	IETF	✅	✅	✅
ISO 18013-5 (mDL)	ISO	✅	✅	✅
DIF Presentation Exchange	DIF	✅	✅	❌
DCQL	DIF	✅	✅	❌