A multitude of activities are underway to establish a global decentralized infrastructure for digital ID, comprised of various blocks spanning the technology stack (wallets, key storage, credentials format, trust anchors, etc.)
Standards and open-source organizations have been building different parts of the stack, such as specifications, protocols, libraries and trust frameworks.
However, the challenge lies in the lack of global coordination among these activities, as they often occur within separate communities and implementations, they tend to be domestically or regionally scoped, and we observe a mix of public and private sector leadership in the governance. The result is a lack of global interoperability.
Even with different members and approaches, the same goal motivates us all: enable 8 billion people to perform more trustworthy identity transactions. Succeeding in this goal will yield a wealth of benefits from GDP growth, to social inclusion, to better health outcomes while mitigating a raft of challenges from financial crime to AI-driven deep-fakes. Failing to act at speed is also not an option. We see accelerating financial crime linked to digital identity, such as the $212B identified by FinCEN,* we see breaches in identity exploited to perform acts of war, and we still lack the global identity infrastructure that could help mitigate the next “COVID-19†health crisis.
No one single organization or country will build the global infrastructure required. We need a global community of experts that represent different non-profits, multi-lateral organizations and countries to chart a cross-standard roadmap to achieve the interoperability vital to us all.
*Source: The US Treasury’s FinCEN issued a public statement at FedID September 7, 2023 regarding an imminent report on the Identity Project, which will affirm that 1.4 million Suspicious Activity Reports (SARS) are attributed to identity infrastructure issues, added up to $212B in financial crimes
Empowering Digital Identity:
Where Collective Intelligence
Drives Global Interoperability
