Re: Utah State-Endorsed Digital Identity (SEDI) legislation

I was about to send the message below before Christopher’s clarification.
Given the distinctions raised, I think my framing was too optimistic, so
I’m sharing it here for context.

------------------------------

> Could this legislation bring us closer to global trust and
interoperability?


I think the bill delivers well on some SSI principles, as mentioned by
Christopher himself.


As someone from Europe, it is great to hear that eIDAS/EUDI Wallet is
moving in a very similar direction.


If both frameworks keep the idea of “choose the wallet you want” and
portability across wallets, that’s a strong base.


And if convergence happens not just on the same legislative principles, but
also on the same building blocks, DIDs + VCs, shared crypto algorithms, and
compatible presentation/verification protocols,  global interoperability
becomes easier and pretty much natural.


I would also like to mention that for any digital-sovereignty-enabling
endeavor, wide adoption comes from winning the hearts of developers:
simple, well documented APIs with semantic touch points to technologies
used daily in development.


Regards,

Jori


After reading the pushback, I agree a more realistic framing is that
legislative alignment would need to happen first, reaching SEDI’s level of
individual protections, before meaningful architectural convergence is even
a question.

Regards,

Jori

to 12.2.2026 klo 8.46 ap. Christopher Allen <
ChristopherA@lifewithalacrity.com> kirjoitti:

>
>
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 9:59 PM Detlef Hühnlein (ecsec GmbH) <
> detlef.huehnlein@ecsec.de> wrote:
>
>> Dear Jori, Anders, Brent, Drummond, Venu, Manu, all,
>> the summary below could also serve as very high level summary of the
>> eIDAS-Regulation
>> including its extension related to the EUDI-Wallet and the envisioned
>> European Business Wallet.
>>
>> Could this legislation bring us closer to global trust and
>> interoperability?
>>
> I need to push back on this comparison of SEDI as being anything like the
> EU's eIDAS and EUDI initiatives.
>
> While they may share some surface features (wallet-based, selective
> disclosure support), their underlying philosophies are quite different — in
> some cases opposite.
>
> The most fundamental difference: SEDI's digital bill of rights declares
> that identity is "innate to the individual's existence and independent of
> the state." The state endorses, it doesn't confer. As Drummond noted, this
> is a watershed. EUDI depends heavily on a government-issued anchor
> credential — the state remains the source of identity, not just its
> endorser.
>
> Some other key contrasts:
>
> * SEDI explicitly prohibits the state from monitoring, surveilling, or
> tracking presentations. EUDI has struggled with "phone home" problems —
> credentials calling back to issuers on use. (Blockchain Commons joined the
> No Phone Home initiative on exactly this issue.)
>
> * SEDI defines a "personal digital identifier" that is created by the
> individual, mathematically provable, and transportable to infrastructure of
> the holder's choosing. EUDI has been slow to warm to DIDs at all.
>
> * SEDI requires open standards free from licensing fees and patent
> restrictions. eIDAS mandates integration at the OS level, creating exactly
> the platform capture risk I wrote about after GDC25 — where Google and
> Apple become the real gatekeepers of identity.
>
> * And SEDI's Duty of Loyalty — requiring wallet providers, verifiers, and
> relying parties to act in the individual's best interests — has no
> equivalent in eIDAS.
>
> * Swiss e-ID sits somewhere between these approaches. Switzerland has the
> democratic culture and institutional safeguards to potentially get this
> right, but its architecture doesn't go as far as SEDI in protecting the
> individual by design. I wrote about what Switzerland would need in my "Five
> Anchors" article:
>
>      https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/musings-swiss-eid/
>
> On EUDI and the broader problems of platform capture in identity standards:
>
>     https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/musings-gdc25/
>
> And on SEDI specifically:
>
>    https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/Musings-SEDI/
>
> Global interoperability is a worthy goal, but not if it means flattening
> SEDI's protections down to EUDI's weaker model. The question really should
> be: can EUDI be brought up to SEDI's standard?
>
> — Christopher Allen
>