Credential types

MATTR VII supports two types of CWT credentials:

• CWT credentials: These are based on a concise, non-semantic model.
• Semantic CWT credentials: These are based on the W3C Verifiable Credential (VC) data model and provide more descriptive semantic meaning.

Semantic CWT credentials offer a standards-compliant way of constructing a verifiable credential that can be understood by many parties in an interoperable way. However, the data model is expressive in ways that will result in payloads significantly larger than the claims data. The smaller the claims, the larger the ratio of the data model overhead. In general, the more compact a credential is, the quicker and easier it is to manage by holders and verifiers.

The choice between the two comes down to how compact you need the credential to be versus how openly you intend to share and exchange credentials across different domains and jurisdictions. Therefore, choosing is a balance of standards compliance supporting an open ecosystem or a more compact credential that can probably only be used within a closed ecosystem.