What Sunbird RC is and what it's not?

Where Sunbird RC fits — and what you'll still need to build or bring yourself.

Sunbird RC is a set of open-source building blocks for registries and verifiable credentials. This page draws the line clearly, so adopters know what they're getting and what they still need to build or bring themselves.

What Sunbird RC is

A configurable, low-code registry and W3C-compliant credentialing platform, made up of independently deployable microservices:

• Identity

• Credential Schema

• Credential Issuance

• Claims / Attestation

• OID4VC

• Notification

• Metrics

For the full picture, see Sunbird RC Overview, Why do we need Sunbird RC? and Core Capabilities.

Works with any compliant wallet. Through the OID4VC microservice, Sunbird RC now speaks OpenID4VCI (issuance) and OpenID4VP (presentation), so any compliant wallet — not just a Sunbird-built one — can fetch, hold and present credentials issued by the platform.

What Sunbird RC is not

Sunbird RC is not…	What that means for you
A wallet app	Sunbird RC does not ship a holder-facing wallet with its own credential storage or UI — earlier wallet and verifier-app prototypes were removed from the codebase in favor of standards compliance. Citizens use any OpenID4VCI/VP-compliant wallet of their choice.
An identity provider	Authentication and authorization run through Keycloak by default, but Sunbird RC can sit behind any OpenID Connect-compliant IDP and OAuth2 resource server — it doesn't replace one.
A consent management platform	By design, the consent decision and disclosure happen inside the holder's own wallet — the verifier states what it needs via DCQL, and the wallet decides what to share. This keeps consent under the holder's control rather than logged on a central server.
A blockchain or DID network	DIDs are generated and resolved as part of identity management, but Sunbird RC doesn't operate a distributed ledger or implement DIDComm — it's a centrally operated registry with DID-compliant, web-resolvable identifiers.
A turnkey vertical solution	There's no built-in student registry, national ID system or health registry out of the box — every deployment defines its own schemas, workflows and attestation policy to fit its use case.