CTO of Digidentity introduces the hybrid wallet at EIC 2024

Decentralized identity has had EIC 2024 buzzing – but Marcel Wendt, CTO of Dutch firm Digidentity, says let’s not get carried away. His talk, “Introducing the Hybrid Wallet: Bridging Federated and Decentralized Identity Systems,” aims to map out a transitional phase of wallet development that takes practical realities into account.

“I wanted to discuss hybrid wallets because I don’t believe in the full decentralized identity world,” says Wendt. “It looks nice. I think we’re not there yet. All the relying parties need to do a lot on their side. So there will be a stage, a couple of years before that’s really implemented on both sides.”

Digidentity’s hybrid wallet proposal merges federated identity systems with decentralized technologies. Government-led federated ID systems, says Wendt, already have millions of users. Private-led federated ID systems are also widespread through Europe, often through telecom or banking systems. “So in total, you have around 300 million citizen eIDs already up and running in eIDAS, on different levels of products.”

He says that even assuming 100 million users with active digital identity apps, “if you make that app both federated as decentralized, you can really jumpstart the decentralized world, because the people are already using it on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis.”

Wendt believes “what we need to build is a new swiss army knife for identity,” which will give relying parties time to catch up as the shift to decentralization continues. It needs to be equipped to handle existing protocols such as SAML authentication, OpenID Connect, cloud signing and OpenID 4VP, to factor in businesses that still rely on legacy systems.

The authentication layer is a key element, says Wendt. “When you have the wallet, how do you do the authentication, to still know that this user is really this user, and the user that has created this credential?” At the beginning, he says, liveness detection and deepfake detection help. “But how do you know that after a month, it’s still the same user that has this token in his hands? It is really important that the authentication layer is really embedded into the wallet. And in most wallets that I’ve seen, it’s not implemented yet.”

Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  decentralized ID  |  Digidentity  |  digital identity  |  digital wallets  |  EIC 2024  |  eIDAS  |  KuppingerCole  |  mobile app  |  OpenID Connect