California integrates W3C VCs into 34 million+ physical documents

California is the 4th largest economy in the world, and their
Department of Motor Vehicles has been one of the government agencies
that are trailblazing the use of W3C Verifiable Credentials. As a
reminder, California DMV launched with support for W3C VCs for their
digital driver's license more than two years ago and roughly 2.7
million Californians are walking around with W3C VCs in their pocket
today.

That number is getting ready to get a big boost based on the
announcement that the CA DMV made earlier this week. They have now
integrated W3C VCs into their physical driver's licenses and
identification cards via the use of Verifiable Credential Barcodes,
which is a specification that is incubated by this community:

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-to-release-new-california-drivers-license-and-identification-card-design-with-advanced-security-features/

This means that regardless of the extent to which people adopt digital
wallets in California, there will be W3C VCs on their physical
identification documents. That means that W3C VCs are now in the
process of being rolled out to all 34.7 million people that have a
California-issued driver's license or identification card.

Congratulations to the W3C Credentials CG and W3C Verifiable
Credentials WG for incubating and standardizing the technologies that
led to this breakthrough!

If you want to know roughly how it works, we've got a specification
for that... :)

https://w3c-ccg.github.io/vc-barcodes/

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
https://www.digitalbazaar.com/

Received on Saturday, 4 October 2025 17:29:46 UTC