Identosphere 256 Nov 24-Nov 30: EUID Launchpad Dec 10-12 • NCCoE Mobile Driver’s License Dec 16 • Lots of AI • Age Verification • Standards Politics
This is the weekly Identosphere Newsletter sharing highlights from around the web covering Decentralized and Self-Sovereign Identity curated by Kaliya Young, Identity Woman.
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Upcoming
Call for Papers Open Now Open Identity Summit Deadline: January 31st, 2026
The summit takes place May 21–22, 2026 at University of Applied Sciences Dresden (HTW Dresden) in Dresden, Germany
European Commission is hosting the EUDI Wallet Launchpad in Brussels (Dec 10-12).
Advanced features of European Digital Credentials for Learning (EDC)”, 11 December at 11:00 CET.
This webinar is a follow-up to the Basics of European Digital Credentials for Learning organised in January 2025 and is a great opportunity to deepen your knowledge about EDC and its use. Focus on advanced topics such as implementation scenarios (service vs. code-based), available resources on code.europa.eu, EDC claim types, REST API integration, credential preview customisation, and future developments, including new credential types, improved sealing options, and replicable use cases for University Alliances.
NCCoE Mobile Driver’s License Project Update Webinar December 16, 2025.
The NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) is making progress in accelerating the secure adoption of mobile driver’s license (mDL) standards and best practices. Join us for a webinar where we’ll be sharing newly available project resources and announcing our second project use case.
Join us at the 1EdTech Digital Credentials Summit in Philadelphia, February 18-20, 2026.
DIF Unconference Africa (an IIW Regional Event) Feb 24-26, 2026 Cape Town
Hiring
Finacore
“We’re honored to announce that filancore has been listed as a Verifiable Credentials provider in two Gartner Hype Cycles this year!”
New Projects
AgroWeb3: Verifiable Credentials for Smallholder Farmers
Three million: Develop the ecosystem of verifiable digital credentials in four countries in Latin America and the Caribbean for their use in managing the economic and environmental asset portfolios of smallholder farmers (AgroWeb3).
Thoughtful
(Heather Flanagan) Digital Identity Wallet Standards, the DC API, and Politics
The DC API is a protocol under development at the W3C. It isn’t a standard yet, it isn’t a wallet, and it isn’t an OS-level API. It’s one layer in a larger system.
The DC API connects a request from the browser to a wallet. Everything else happens above or below it. Tim Cappalli is doing amazing work documenting this on the Digital Credentials Developers website.
(Kuppinger Cole) Apple’s Digital ID Move: Helpful Progress, but Not Yet the Breakthrough
MyData in Practice: Transforming Job Seeking By Aggregating #SkillsData
The Death of the Wallet
Chapter 1: The Skeuomorphic Trap
Chapter 2: The Rise of the “Person Agent”
Chapter 3: The “Organization Agent”
Chapter 4: The EUBW Paradox
Chapter 5: The Ephemeral Context
Chapter 6: Conclusion
[video] (Spruce) How Verifiable Digital Credentials Work
Today’s identity systems weren’t built for the digital world. Verifiable digital credentials offer a modern alternative: secure, portable, privacy-protected, and built for cross-agency use. In this video, we break down how this technology works across public services.
ACDCs Should Underpin Digital Trust; Keep W3C VCs as Derivative Artifacts
Standards
VC Bitstring Status List Interoperability Report 1.0
Test Interoperability Report for Verifiable Credentials status
30 November 2025
HAIP 1.0 & OpenID4VP 1.0 achieve 98% in OIDF interop testing
The OpenID Foundation is proud to announce successful interoperability testing of the High Assurance Interoperability Profile (HAIP) 1.0 draft 05, alongside the Final specifications for OpenID for Verifiable Presentations (OpenID4VP) 1.0 and OpenID for Verifiable Credential Issuance (OpenID4VCI) 1.0.
Bloomberg joins the OpenID Foundation as newest member and commits directed funding for AuthZEN
The OpenID Foundation is pleased to welcome Bloomberg as its newest member. Bloomberg, a global leader in business and financial information, brings a wealth of expertise and a strong commitment to advancing open identity standards that will benefit the entire community.
Education
Get More out of Open Badges: How Velocity Network complements Open Badges to ensure trust, privacy and utility
The Velocity Network, governed by the Velocity Network Foundation community, perfectly aligns to all these requirements, clearly and transparently defining all elements of the rulebook….Not only are all these requirements defined by the global community in a democratic process, but the rulebook is implemented in a fully operational, scalable, open and public infrastructure – the Velocity Network MainNet.
Children
When Children Design AI: What We Learned by Actually Listening
What if children aren’t just AI users to be protected, but experts we should be learning from? At MyData 2025, the MyData4Children workshop turned the usual conversation on its head. Instead of adults designing AI for children, seven children aged 7-10 took the lead, showing us how they understand AI, what they want from it, and—perhaps most importantly—what they absolutely don’t want it to do. The results surprised even the parents in the room.
From Pilot Programs to Global Mandate: Age Assurance’s New Reality
Age assurance has moved from a developing trend to a global mandate, and the broader world of age verification has shifted with it. More than 45 countries now require platforms to verify age through methods like device-based age verification, on-device estimation, reusable credentials, or structured checks tied to new age verification laws.
The European Parliament close to calling for a ban on social networks for under-16s
AI
Agent Name Service (ANS): A Universal Directory for Secure AI Agent Discovery and Interoperability
(Indicio) Four reasons why travel companies using AI need Indicio Proven
How to prevent a spoofed AI agent in your travel solution? AI isn’t going to work if customers can’t trust your agents — and right now legacy authentication isn’t up to the task. At Indicio, we’re making AI systems a practical, implementable reality for travel and tourism by using decentralized identity and Verifiable Credentials for secure, privacy-preserving, GDPR-compliant authentication and data sharing.
Building AI Trust at Scale: Authorising Autonomous Agents at Scale
[Video] (Dock) Know Your Agent: Solving Identity for AI Agents [Video and Takeaways]
The rise of AI agents is one of the most significant shifts unfolding across the internet today. From booking travel to managing work tasks, agents are quickly becoming powerful tools that act on behalf of users. In fact, by next year, there may be more non-human agents online than human users. The promise is clear: automate the drudge work and reclaim your time.
(Glama) Securing Enterprise AI Agents with Unique Identities in the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
(dock)5 Identity Gaps That Put AI Agents at Risk
Identity proofing: Verifiable digital credentials in the AI era
When AI Becomes the Attacker: Rethinking Identity for Agentic AI
Identity and Access Management for AI Agents
Agentic AI explosion driven by $50B market opportunity and related risks
Schematic Interoperability Lives in the Architecture, Not the Models
[blog and short video] (GLEIF) vLEI: Accelerate Innovation by Enabling Trusted Digital Identity using Verifiable Credentials
New Wallet / Updates
Learner Credential Wallet
Digital Diplomacy
European Union and Singapore discuss reinforcing digital cooperation through Digital Partnership Council
Artificial Intelligence
Online safety and tackling scams
Trust services
Cybersecurity
Data
Semiconductors and quantum
Nesen.ID (SlideDeck) (Video)
Decentralized Social
The State of the Open Social Web
From the “This Doesn’t Sound Good” Department
Google Starts Sharing All Your Text Messages With Your Employer
Identity verification processes broke down during Trump govt transition: report
Research
(Research) On Addressing Isolation in Blockchain-Based Self-Sovereign Identity
Unfortunately, blockchains are mostly siloed, affecting the interoperability and universality of SSI. We investigate the effect of blockchain isolation on blockchain-based SSI. We first define possible scenarios for cross-chain SSI and exemplify with real-life use cases
(Research) DID-TUF [The Update Framework]: Secure Decentralized Identifier Management using Trustless Registries
The Update Framework (TUF) to enable secure and efficient dissemination of DID documents through a trustless registry model. This method blends the strengths of registry-based and registry-less approaches to enhance the resilience and security of decentralized identity systems. Our solution is robust against a wide range of attacks while maintaining a small overhead. It is also agnostic to the DID document storage method and provides an auditable trail of updates.
(Research) Towards a Universal Digital Identity: a blockchain-based framework for borderless verification
The paper sets out the vision, necessity, operational framework, and implications of a blockchain-based UDI, arguing that such a transformation is both inevitable and essential for the future of the digital economy.
(Research) Modern IAM Standards Landscape: A Systematic Mapping of Open IAM Standards to Enterprise Identity Frameworks
The study finds that the strengths of coverage in authentication and Single Sign-On (SSO) are high, coverage in provisioning is moderate, and coverage in governance integration is high. An open-source implementation taxonomy, that is, Keycloak, Ory, Gluu/Janssen, Open Policy Agent (OPA), and MidPoint, is created to measure interoperability, maturity, and standard compliance. The resultant assessment framework incorporates process coverage, implementation maturity and governance alignment and offers a blueprint that researchers and practitioners can use to standardize IAM implementations.
(Research) A Review on Blockchain-Based Trust and Reputation Schemes in Metaverse Environments
This paper provides an extensive review of blockchain-enabled trust and reputation frameworks specifically tailored to metaverse ecosystems.Our analysis finds that score-based designs trade scalability for nuanced reputation representation, while SSI- and SBT-based approaches improve Sybil-resistance but introduce significant privacy governance challenges.