Bhutan begins migrating self-sovereign digital ID to Ethereum

Bhutan has begun the integration of its National Digital Identity (NDI) platform with the Ethereum open-source blockchain protocol, the Kingdom announced this week on Instagram.

The system started on Hyperledger’s Indy distributed ledger and migrated to Polygon Blockchain for better security and performance just over a year ago. Bhutan’s GovTech Agency held a hackathon with support from the Ethereum Foundation earlier this year to develop decentralized applications powered by the NDI.

Bhutan Prime Minister Lyonchen Tshering Tobgay, Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum President Aya Miyaguchi attended the announcement of the integration.

Bhutan became the first country in the world with a self-sovereign digital identity in late-2023, and has since been held up as a model for SSI.

NDI plans to complete the integration to Ethereum-based infrastructure by early next year, Fintech News Singapore reports.

“Decentralized digital identity empowers people by giving them more secure control over their data and their online lives,” Buterin said, according to the report.

Bhutan’s embrace of an open architecture on Ethereum reflects why we build this platform: to drive meaningful, positive change through open-source technology.”

GovTech Secretary Jigme Tenzing said that Ethereum’s highly decentralized nature makes it “virtually impervious to disruption,” reports the Bhutan Broadcasting Service (via Liminal’s Morning Brief). Druk Holding and Investment, which NDI was spun off from, also cited speed as a reason for the choice of blockchain. Liminal notes a similar initiative with the DRCPass and an R&D partnership with the Indian Statistical Institute on Aadhaar.

NDI continues to expand the system’s capabilities, meanwhile, introducing a digital signature platform in September to enable authenticity checks for signed documents and actions.

Every digital signature on the platform is tied to a verifiable credential issued to a Bhutanese digital identity wallet and secured with decentralized identifiers (DIDs), according to the announcement.

“Our Digital Signature Platform is more than just an upgrade to electronic signing—it’s a leap forward in digital trust. By combining decentralized identity, cryptographic verification, and a human-friendly signing experience, we’ve built a system that ensures every document signed carries the same weight of authenticity years into the future as it does today,” says Jacques von Benecke, CEO of Bhutan NDI.

This post was updated at 2:14pm Eastern on October 15, 2025 to include information reported by the BBS and Liminal.

Article Topics

Bhutan  |  Bhutan NDI  |  blockchain  |  digital ID  |  Ethereum  |  open source  |  self-sovereign identity