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

On Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 2:27 AM Lars Kæraa Lücke <lkl@cph.ai> wrote:

> We’ve been following this debate with great interest. The tension between
> the EUDI (State-Anchored) and SEDI (Individual-Anchored) models highlights
> a critical gap in our current architecture: *How do we trust the Client
> without controlling it?*
>

This is brilliant. It clearly illustrates the disconnect between the EUDI
approach and SEDI. Unfortunately, it also illustrates the fundamental error
in the EUDI approach.

You only need to trust those things you can't control.

If you control something, trust is not in question. The question itself
isn't well-formed.

The point of SEDI is that the inspired leadership in Utah has found a way
to ensure that neither the state nor corporations control the means of
identification. Rather, they are defining trustworthy mechanisms that
enable trust in the digital interactions we have, both in their
authenticity (cryptography) and in their appropriateness (privacy).

What we have learned from decentralized systems is that it is possible to
build a framework of trustworthy data exchange that does not rely on a
central entity controlling access or restricting clients. Rather than a
topological protocol that defers to a central authority, like OAuth and any
Phone Home system, Bitcoin showed how to manage state amongst adversarial
collaborators through signed transactions.

Apropos to this thread, bitcoin works not because someone has blessed some
set of "approved wallets" but by embedding the protocol in cryptographic
datagrams independent of the network. You can talk to ANY bitcoin node to
get a transaction in, and, frankly, you can use any protocol that node
supports. From there out its all datagram. (Yes, there is a gossip network,
but it is essentially an unsecured, uncontrolled channel anyone can use and
it has essentially no security guarantees.)

In short, you don't trust the client, which would be a categorical
cybersecurity error.

You trust the math.

-j


-- 
Joe Andrieu
President
joe@legreq.com
+1(805)705-8651
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