If you work in or interact with the field of digital identity, you know that the sector has experienced some major events in 2023. Verifiable credentials are being recognized on a global scale. A huge part of this digital identity boom is happening in Europe, where the EU has been making moves on both the legislative and the implementation level.
Back in September 2020, Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission) announced the EU digital identity. This digital identity would be available to both people and organizations to verify information about themselves in the many processes happening throughout the EU. The statement came with the announcement of a personal digital wallet being made available for every EU citizen and resident.
Although this statement was incredibly exciting to the sector, at this point very little was known about the actual practical plans for the EU digital identity (EUDI) at this point in time. There were, and in some cases still are, some topics of discussions such as: what standards would be used, would it be market-implemented or government-implemented, and would the infrastructure be decentralized.
Much has happened since then. The eIDAS expert group released the Architecture Reference Framework (ARF), a document containing a set of the specifications needed to develop an interoperable European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet Solution based on common standards and practices. Although focused on digital identity wallets, and not in it's final version, it is giving us an indication of the standards the EU will be requiring for the exchange of verifiable data.
As Paradym aims to be compliant with all modern standards, and the EU is leading in clear regulation, the ARF is taken into account when planning Paradyms roadmap. Based on the ARF, the Paradym platform will be supporting OpenID for Verifiable Credentials (OpenID4VC), Selective Disclosure JWT Verifiable Credentials (SD-JWT-VC) and eventually mDoc. The first two are scheduled for Q1, while mDoc will be added later in 2024 depending on market demand. The Paradym wallet is a bit ahead of the platform, and already supports DIIP (Decentralized Identity Interop Profile) version 1, the stepping stone to ARF compliance.
DIIP is an interop profile that aims to be the most user-friendly profile to facilitate the adoption of SSI. The components of DIIP have been selected to align with the ARF, so companies can come together and support the same iteratively evolving stack in the road towards EU compliance. The first version of DIIP was developed collaboratively by the Dutch Blockchain Coalition in partnership with TNO, Animo Solutions and Sphereon. The collective is growing however, and DIIPv2 is being discussed currently. The initiative has a GitHub and Discord for further community discussion.
Another big EU development is the selection and start of the consortia working on the large scale pilots. These large scale pilots are efforts that bring together different countries and industry partners to realize pilots using the European digital identity wallet for travel, health, banking, education and more.
With the ARF and the large-scale pilots, the building blocks of EU adoption are being laid. As these efforts progress, and discussions are coming to conclusions, the market will soon feel the impact of this years-long focus on EU digital identity. Organizations have the choice to wait until everything is set in stone, or to forge ahead and start implementing.