Session Abstract: In 2022, standards organizations and open source groups including W3C, OpenID Foundation, DIF, Hyperledger, and ISO made great progress defining protocol specifications and code for issuing digital credentials. In this session, discuss some of the emerging issuance protocols, and compare their features, capabilities and tradeoffs. In order to realize the vision of decentralized identity with person-controlled verifiable credentials that thwart platform lock-in, standardized issuance protocols must be developed. Today’s digital credential issuance mechanisms are proprietary. There are no common standards for provisioning and installation of digital credentials into general-purpose credential wallets. Good news: We expect to see stable draft specifications coming out in 2023, based on work begun last year. In this session, we will discuss the meaning and context of credential issuance and the essential nature of standardized protocols, core requirements, desired outcomes and important features of issuance protocol. We'll also talk about the things that must be standardized to achieve the outcomes, and compare approaches taken by each issuance standardization group.