Verifiable credentials and digital wallets, by ear

Explains what a digital identity is, how decentralized identity hands credential control to users, and how the issuer-holder-verifier model works.

Defines verifiable credentials as cryptographically verifiable attestations, walks through real deployments, and argues adoption depends on solving business problems rather than perfecting the technology.

Covers what decentralized identity means, why governments struggle to implement it, and how competing standards and politics shape digital wallets.

Explains the EU eIDAS regulation, its trust services and qualified certificates, and how eIDAS 2.0 extends it to digital identity wallets.

Describes how digital identity wallets work, the role governments play in issuing them, and where smart and roaming wallets may go next.

Walks through California's mobile driver's license rollout, including adoption data, where mDLs are accepted today, remote verification, and lessons for other DMVs.

Shows how digital travel credentials and mobile driver's licenses rely on interoperability, privacy-preserving verification, and trust frameworks across ICAO, AAMVA, and wallet vendors.

Reviews where EU member states stand against the December 2026 EUDI Wallet deadline, covering testing, interoperability, the payments model, and adoption.

Explains how EUDI Wallets and verifiable credentials use the issuer-holder-verifier model, and argues adoption depends on business value such as automating multi-credential processes.

Covers why the FIDO Alliance is extending from passkeys into digital credentials and wallets, and how the two fit together.

Two architects of the EUDI Wallet ecosystem explain the EU plan to give every citizen a digital identity wallet and its effect beyond Europe.

Explains the ISO mobile driving license standard (ISO/IEC 18013-5), how mDL data and presentation work, and why it matters for daily life.

Surveys privacy-preserving techniques such as selective disclosure and zero-knowledge proofs, and explains how SD-JWT adds selective disclosure to JSON Web Tokens.

Explains the OpenID4VCI and OpenID4VP specifications, the HAIP profile for regulated deployments, conformance testing, and alignment with ISO proximity flows.

Compares selective disclosure credentials with zero-knowledge proofs, weighing operational overhead, correlation risk, and where complexity lands in wallet design at scale.