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Learn / Identity

Identity, personhood, and privacy

Trace what stays on your device, what verification uses, and what a relying service should learn.

Protocol design · Reviewed 3 October 2026

Explore the mechanism

Trace the processVEID design • capabilities depend on the deployed version

Prove a property. Limit what travels.

Select a stage to see who acts, what changes, and what evidence remains.

Your device

Collect evidence with purpose-specific consent.

Source document images and full OCR stay on your device.

Stage 1 of 4
Stages explain a design and its evidence; a highlighted stage is not proof of real execution. Sources: underlying documentation.

01 / Explanation

A wallet is not a unique human

Signing with a key proves control of that key. Human uniqueness requires additional evidence, anti-Sybil rules, and a way to handle duplicate enrolment and recovery. Identity verification, personhood, and one-person-one-allocation are related requirements rather than interchangeable proofs.

02 / Explanation

Different uses need different consent

The privacy design keeps source document images and full OCR on-device. Minimum derived data may be approved for a specific verification scope. A service should request an available proof for its purpose, not inherit every piece of identity evidence. General marketplace participation does not universally require VEID; individual offerings may set requirements.

03 / Explanation

Inclusion is part of correctness

Evaluate false acceptance alongside false rejection, recovery, disability access, cost, and cross-context linkability. Personhood-credential research identifies deployment and governance challenges; it does not validate VEID. Neither encryption nor a proposed zero-knowledge flow proves that every production implementation has achieved these goals.

Check your understanding

What does a valid wallet signature establish?

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