Digital ID systems have made access to welfare, healthcare, financial services, and societal schemes easier, by reducing costs and efforts for citizens, operators, and the state alike.

When built as sovereign, private-by-default infrastructure, digital identity is a clear d/acc win: it helps deliver legal identity for all (SDG 16.9), enables direct humanitarian aid without donor-platform or state chokepoints, and strengthens DPI by turning government IDs into selectively disclosable, interoperable, safer credentials. Most of all, the goal is for everyone, especially the most vulnerable, to be safer because of technology, not despite it.

Why Digital Identity Matters Now

The digital identity gap is large and immediate: ~850 million people lack any official ID, and ~3.3 billion do not have access to any government-recognized digital ID. This affects not only their personhood, citizenship, and migratory status, but also their ability to safely connect with family and access financial sovereignty online.

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) is spreading worldwide, with more than 160+ countries adopting it at some stage. The idea is simple: identity, payments, and data-exchange rails that make government and other services faster, cheaper, and fairer – uplifting entire countries and populations.

Since launching in 2010, India’s Aadhaar based  DPI, has been pivotal. That year fewer than 20% used formal banking. Aadhaar cut verification costs from $12 to < $0.6, enabling ~700 million new bank accounts, about 65% owned by women. UPI, an instant payment infrastructure built on top of Aadhar’s identity layer, now processes ~20 billion transactions/month, and identity-linked Direct Benefit Transfer reports cumulative leakage reductions of ₹3.5 lakh crore (~US $42B)

Other examples show similar impact. Humanitarian organizations are piloting  stablecoin infrastructure for aid disbursement, enabling cross-border transfers to the unbanked in seconds for cents versus the traditional 7% fee. The European Digital Identity Wallet, set to launch as sovereign user-controlled infrastructure for EU citizens, encourages member states to adopt zero-knowledge proofs. The wider acceptance of ePassports for privacy-preserving NFC checks lays groundwork for more sophisticated identity systems built on existing government credentials.

Inclusion is not a choice, but imperative by Design

Adoption is not the only goal. Inclusion is. The same rails that speed civic service delivery, if improperly deployed, could result in new forms of exclusion, amplification of existing societal constraints, or unintended consequences.

When OTPs are the only identification to deliver welfare, mass exclusion is inevitable. National Digital ID systems if not deliberately built for inclusion can easily exclude millions, especially marginal communities. Data of the vulnerable are the least protected, hence over collection of personal information of refugees can have unintended consequences.

Accelerationism states technological progress speeds social change. Digital Identity certainly amplifies this goal, but if not designed with the principles of self sovereign identity and inclusion, this could become a new tool to exercise power and control over people. Pure acceleration without defense mechanisms risks entrenching existing inequalities, the well-connected get faster service while the marginalized face new barriers.

The d/acc movement aims to keep the gains, such as reach, speed, accountability, while designing for those least served, and keep the infrastructure resilient to any centralized checkpoints.

Weaponized Interdependence

This defensive approach becomes critical when we examine how digital identity creates new forms of leverage. Our data lives everywhere: government portals, telcos, IoT providers, and social platforms, all acting as data brokers. As most of us have experienced, this data is often breached, opening the door for targeted attacks by bad actors or governments. This could lead to everything from basic privacy violations to the loss of one’s life savings. A secondary problem with the current model is the lack of data integrity; for example, having an inaccurate credit score could exclude a small-scale farmer from getting a loan.

We have tools for digital self sovereignty. Yet large platforms wall off user data and monetize profiles without meaningful consent. Every dependency becomes a potential chokepoint, where operators between a person and a service can surveil, manipulate, or deny access. Unlike the unintentional exclusion from poor design, this weaponized interdependence represents deliberate accumulation of control. The same identity rails that should liberate become instruments of coercion when centralized actors control the gates.

The path forward is defensive by design. When we assume coercion is possible and failure is normal, we build systems that protect human agency.

d/acc for Identity: Coordinated Intention

Defensive acceleration asks builders, policymakers, and implementers to reduce harm while expanding agency, on purpose. That means pairing culture and governance with specific technical moves. Build defenses to make Sybil and spam more expensive, and design better interfaces, where users have reasonable information to make decisions on consent and what transactions they are approving, with safety embedded.

Make privacy the default and use protocols that are less reliant on chokepoints. Traditional technical metrics like uptime and authentication rates tell us if systems work, but not who they work for. We need to measure what matters: when biometric verification fails, can that same person access welfare through alternative authentication? In regions where women are 26% less likely to own phones, does our system offer equitable pathways? Can a refugee fleeing without documents establish digital identity to receive aid?

What to Build

Building d/acc-aligned identity infrastructure requires coordinated action across stakeholders. Each group has a role in creating systems that expand access while defending against coercion, delivering on the promise of legal identity for all (SDG 16.9) through privacy-preserving technology.

For Builders & Technologists

• Design layered proofs through selective disclosure that align with real-world regulatory requirements

• Implement digital wallets, binded to cryptographic key pairs, that self-custody verifiable credentials and present only required attestations

• Optimize for low-end devices using cryptographic primitives rather than hardware security modules. Most users in the global south lack access to high-end phones

• Build verifier systems that check signatures efficiently, cutting verification costs from dollars to cents

For Companies & Service Providers

• Accept minimal viable proofs: age verification without birthdate, KYC without full identity exposure, professional credentials without employment history

• Reduce data liability by designing verification flows, only what regulations require, not collecting entire identity profiles

• Support interoperable standards that work across wallets and providers

For Individuals & Communities

• Gain control over your identity data through self-custodied wallets

• Share only required proofs: prove age eligibility, citizenship, or sanctions clearance without exposing full documents

• Access government and financial services with the same credentials across providers

• Benefit from embedded safety features: human-readable consent screens, transaction previews, spending caps, and warnings for risky patterns

For Humanitarians & Development Organizations

• Deploy identity systems that work offline and on basic devices for refugee and displaced populations

• Enable cross-border credential portability for migrants who need identity continuity

• Build on existing initiatives, by connecting technical infrastructure to rights-based frameworks, ensuring technology serves human dignity rather than surveillance

This builds on the foundation of legal identity as a human right.

human.tech, Purpose Built for Digital Sovereignty

human.tech is a set of tools and protocols built to embed digital rights for its users by design. Grounded in applied cryptography, directs the enforceability of cryptography toward fortifying human agency, establishing digital rights that are difficult or impossible to revoke.

human.tech is a modular stack: Keys → Wallet Infrastructure → ZK Identity. Each layer centers the person and reduces incentives to centralize control.

Human Keys replace fragile seed phrases with a breakthrough for key management: derive your wallet keys from human-authenticated attributes using a verifiable Oblivious Pseudorandom Function (vOPRF) on the decentralized Human Network. Inputs are masked; no node sees them, and you can re-derive the same key on any device through the network. Most keys come from pseudorandom generators seeded by entropy (sometimes physical, Cloudflare famously uses a lava-lamp wall). Human Keys instead derive randomness from you.

Wallet as a Protocol (WaaP) is spun from Human Keys, and secured by 2PC MPC Protocol. It supports familiar sign-in methods (social accounts, biometrics) and uses two-party computation (2PC) so every transaction requires two independent approvals, one by the user, and one by a protector network. 2PC enforces limits, rules, and detects behavioural patterns to reduce risks even if a device, dApp, or frontend is compromised.

While root identity can be proven by authenticating through Wallet as a Protocol(WaaP) , more layered proofs of zero knowledge identity can be issued through its plugin system. Common proofs include uniqueness, age range, residency, and sanctions/AML checks as selective-disclosure. Moreover, it could be used to send and receive payments, and sign into any digital service with required credentials.

Zero Knowledge Nullifiers

A critical technology inside this stack is unlinkable nullifiers. Creating verifiable credentials requires computing on personal data, to provide per user identifier, that avoids deduplication of the credentials and also provides anonymity for privacy. This critical architectural process, if done naively, could compromise the issued verifiable credential.

Human Network, computing vOPRF to derive Human Keys, can be repurposed to create nullifiers or per user identifier, computed through a decentralized network, without revealing the personal data in full.

vOPRF, pioneered in usage by human.tech, is now used as a forked version by Reclaim Protocol to make identity proofs from web data, and MetaMask uses the same technology now to create keys from social login methods.

human.tech in practice

RelayID, a recoverable digital identity built on social attestation by Refunite and human.tech is used in Africa to deliver humanitarian aid through stablecoin infrastructure for the undocumented with privacy. human.tech’s open cryptographic framework is paired with Refunite’s long-standing network of  local leaders connecting 150 million displaced people globally. The project is presently implemented in Rwanda and Uganda in the pilot phase.

human.tech is in early technical discussions to enroll Wallet as a Protocol, with a few governments on DPI aligned identity infrastructure for e-payments, digital verification, consent-based data sharing, and integration with everyday services.

human.tech verified ~11k participants for Ika’s capital distribution of ~$111M using zero knowledge KYC—user data remained encrypted, with programmable rules for compliance disclosure. A radical approach to user privacy.

In cryptospace, human.tech’s Sybil resistant infrastructure, Human Passport, has more than 2.2M verified users, and $430M in capital distribution and grants programs.

A Coordinated Vision

The pace isn’t the problem; the direction is.

Digital identity solutions are being advocated by the World Bank to improve lives globally. Building them as humanistic technology embeds digital natural rights by design, so acceleration expands agency, not control.

At human.tech, we are building an open cryptographic framework with clear guiding principles. Immutable code is preeminent for resilient infrastructure, and active, coordinated intention embeds self-sovereign principles into the infrastructure itself.

In pursuit of this direction, we invite academic, scholarly, technical, and creative contributors to co-create a framework for human-aligned technology by putting defensive acceleration (d/acc) into action.