Qualified Verifiable Data Registries (qVDR) as the Foundational Component of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)
- Carsten Stöcker
- Jun 9
- 38 min read
Enabling Digital Sovereignty, Zero Trust Architectures, Resilient Digital Ecosystems and the UN SDGs
The article was originally published by Carsten Stöcker on Medium.
TL;DR (Key Insights)
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is essential public infrastructure — like energy grids — that enables secure, trusted digital services across identity, payments, and data sharing, critical for modern societies and economies.
Qualified Verifiable Data Registries (Qualified VDRs), aligned with the eIDAS 2.0 Qualified Electronic Ledger (QEL) concept, serve as core DPI components by securely storing identities, cryptographic keys, trust lists, revocation lists, and other crucial data, enabling independent verification and ensuring trustworthiness.
Europe’s proposed European Blockchain Services Infrastructure — EBSI, which could serve as a European-led VDR for certain public services, may eventually achieve certification as a QEL serving as a qualified Verifiable Data Registry.
Decentralized DPI (dDPI) leverages DLT-based (qualified) Verifiable Data Registries to enable local data lookups and avoid metadata logging, enhanced further by integrating Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) like zero-knowledge proofs, homomorphic encryption, multi-party computation, and post-quantum cryptography (PQC).
Digital sovereignty — control over digital assets and data — is achieved by adopting DPI frameworks anchored by Qualified VDRs, reducing dependencies on external providers and protecting national interests against foreign interference.
Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), which mandates continuous verification (“never trust, always verify”), is significantly enhanced by Qualified VDRs, facilitating real-time, automated verification of credentials, identities, and authorization across digital ecosystems.
Linking VDRs to Authoritative Public Registries for eal-time integration with public registries (e.g., business registries) and revocation mechanisms ensures credentials remain accurate, trustworthy, and compliant, enhancing overall system transparency and accountability. This link is especially important for the European Business Wallet (EUBW) framework.
Implementing Qualified VDRs is crucial in defending against emerging threats such as sophisticated cyber-attacks, nation-state cyber operations, malicious AI agents, and widespread digital surveillance.
DPI frameworks anchored by Qualified VDRs proactively enhance cybersecurity resilience by introducing verifiable identity checkpoints to counter systemic cyber threats.
Qualified VDRs ensure accountability and trust in transactions involving autonomous AI agents, addressing challenges posed by AI-generated content, digital interactions and malicious agent cloning.
Establishing DPI with Qualified VDRs reduces dependencies on external digital platforms, significantly minimizing vulnerabilities to surveillance capitalism and enhancing citizen privacy.
Qualified VDR-based DPI contributes significantly to economic sovereignty, fostering national innovation, resilience, and reducing reliance on dominant global technology platforms.
International standards and conformity assessments (eIDAS 1.0/2.0, ISO, ETSI, CEN/CENLEC) are fundamental for interoperability, cross-border trust, regulatory compliance, and technical assurance within DPI and Qualified VDRs.
Cooperation-driven architectures (as articulated by RWOT) enhance resilience and innovation compared to centralized, aggregated systems, promoting interoperability and collaboration between digital ecosystems.
The United Nations’ Global Trust Registry initiative exemplifies a global approach to DPI, leveraging Qualified VDRs to establish trust at an international scale, enabling cross-border interoperability, and reinforcing the concept of cooperation-based digital governance.
For policymakers, understanding of and investing in DPI and Qualified VDRs is imperative (not optional) to ensure digital resilience, sovereignty, and security in an increasingly complex and interconnected digital environment.
Abstract
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) consists of interconnected, interoperable digital systems that are fundamental for delivering accessible and efficient public services. As emphasized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), DPI is crucial for accelerating progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by enhancing inclusivity, transparency, and efficiency. Amidst growing geopolitical uncertainties and increasing threats from cyber actors, establishing secure and sovereign DPI has become an essential foundation for societal stability, resilience, and sustainable development.
Hence, Digital Public Infrastructure is emerging as a foundational layer of the digital economy, akin to roads or electricity in the physical world. DPI encompasses interoperable systems for digital identity, payments, and data exchange, built with governance and open standards in mind. This paper introduces Qualified Verifiable Data Registries (Qualified VDRs, qVDR) as a core element of DPI, arguing that they enable key policy goals including digital sovereignty, Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) adoption, and resilient, cooperative digital ecosystems.
We explain DPI in practical terms for policymakers, drawing parallels to energy infrastructure and citing real-world DPI implementations (e.g. India’s Aadhaar, UPI, DEPA and Europe’s emerging initiatives like the European Business Wallet, Manufacturing-X, Catena-X). We then clarify the concept of Verifiable Data Registries (VDRs) and the added value of “qualification” — i.e. meeting rigorous standards (as seen in eIDAS 2.0’s Qualified Electronic Ledgers) to ensure trustworthiness.
We analyze how Qualified VDRs support ZTA principles by providing continuous verification of identities and credentials in a “never trust, always verify” model. In light of rising cyber-attacks, AI-generated threats, and surveillance concerns, we highlight the urgency for robust DPI and trust infrastructure. We emphasize the role of standards and conformity frameworks (including eIDAS 2.0, ISO, CEN/CENELEC, and ETSI specifications) in enabling cross-domain trust and interoperability.
The paper also aligns with the United Nations’ Global Trust Registry initiative, noting it as a practical step toward a global “trust backbone” that leverages VDRs. Throughout, we incorporate insights from the Rebooting Web of Trust (RWOT) whitepaper “Decentralized Identity as a Meta-platform: How Cooperation Beats Aggregation,” which posits that open, decentralized identity networks can achieve network-of-network effects through cooperation rather than centralized aggregation. Our conclusions underline that building DPI with Qualified VDRs is a strategic imperative for governments and institutions to achieve digital sovereignty, security, and inclusive growth.
Note: Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is essential for supporting various dimensions of digital interactions, encompassing transactions between different entity types: natural persons (Person-to-Person, P2P — using “Person” inclusively, irrespective of citizenship, immigration, or residency status), organizations and natural persons (Business-to-Person, B2P; Government-to-Person, G2P), among organizations (Business-to-Business, B2B; Business-to-Government, B2G; Government-to-Government, G2G), and among machines and agents (Machine-to-Machine, M2M; Agent-to-Agent, A2A; Agent-to-Business, A2B; Agent-to-Government, A2G; Agent-to-Person, A2P). Each of these transaction types carries unique and distinct requirements regarding privacy, confidentiality, compliance, transparency, and traceability. While policymakers typically focus on DPI for transactions involving natural persons, transactions among organizations, machines, and agents are at least equally critical from macroeconomic, cybersecurity, and public infrastructure safety perspectives. A robust DPI must effectively support all these diverse transactions, adhering to their respective requirements.
However, this paper deliberately avoids detailed exploration of these differences, simplifying concepts to clarify fundamental interactions within DPI.
Keywords: Digital Public Infrastructure, Verifiable Data Registry, Qualified Electronic Ledger (QEL), Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), Digital Sovereignty, Trust Registry, eIDAS, Data Ecosystems, UN Global Trust Registry
Introduction
Modern societies increasingly depend on digital public infrastructure (DPI) to deliver essential services, much like they depend on public utilities such as electricity or roads. DPI refers to the shared digital systems that enable fundamental, society-wide functions in identification, financial transactions, and data exchange. Essentially, “similar to roads or electricity in the physical world, DPI aims to serve everyone and helps unlock a host of services.” By providing a robust, interoperable framework for digital services, DPI allows governments and businesses to innovate faster, deliver citizen-centric services, and build trust in the digital realm.
However, the rapid expansion of digital services also brings new risks and imperatives. Advanced cyber-attacks and state-sponsored hacking threaten critical systems, while AI-driven agents (including deepfakes and autonomous bots) blur the lines between genuine users and malicious actors. These developments demand a security paradigm shift — captured by the Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) approach — and a stronger emphasis on verifiable trust in every digital transaction.
Moreover, countries and regions are increasingly concerned about digital sovereignty — defined as “the ability to have control over your own digital destiny — the digital identity, data, hardware and software that you rely on and create.” Lacking sovereign DPI can leave nations dependent on external platforms and vulnerable to surveillance or loss of control over data. In the face of these pressures, building resilient digital ecosystems on trustworthy, standards-based infrastructure has become urgent.
This paper argues that Qualified Verifiable Data Registries (Qualified VDRs) should be recognized as core infrastructure in the DPI stack to meet these challenges. Verifiable Data Registries (VDRs) are the backbone systems (such as databases, ledgers, or trust lists) that mediate the creation and verification of decentralized identifiers, public keys, and credentials.
By introducing the notion of “qualified” VDRs, we draw an analogy to regulated trust services in the EU (like qualified trust service providers under eIDAS) — implying that these registries adhere to high standards of security, accuracy, compliance, and governance. Qualified VDRs can directly support ZTA by enabling continuous verification of identities and credentials, and they bolster digital sovereignty by giving institutions authoritative control over trust information.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: First, we provide a practical overview of Digital Public Infrastructure, including global examples and an analogy to energy infrastructure, to ground the concept for policymakers. Next, we dive into Verifiable Data Registries, explaining their role in architectures for digital credentials and decentralized identity, and what it means for a VDR to be “qualified.” We then examine Zero Trust Architecture principles and illustrate how Qualified VDRs operationalize “never trust, always verify” in various contexts. We discuss the urgency of deploying DPI and trust infrastructure in light of emerging threats from AI and cyber-attacks, and how this move can reduce surveillance risks by decentralizing control. The importance of standards and conformity assessments is emphasized throughout — we connect the discussion to frameworks like eIDAS 2.0 (including its provisions for Qualified Electronic Ledgers and trust services), ISO 22739’s definitions for blockchain/DLT, and relevant ETSI specifications — as these ensure interoperability and legal validity. We also highlight alignment with international efforts, notably the UN/CEFACT Global Trust Registry initiative, which aims to create a global index of trusted registries and can be seen as an application of the Qualified VDR concept on a worldwide scale. Drawing on insights from the RWOT whitepaper “How Cooperation Beats Aggregation,” we finally articulate how cooperative infrastructure (as opposed to single-provider platforms) yields greater network effects and resilience.
Ultimately, this paper provides a comprehensive analysis combining conceptual framing, technical description, and policy relevance, to guide decision-makers in strengthening digital public infrastructure with Qualified VDRs at its core.
Digital Public Infrastructure: Foundations and Analogy to Energy Networks
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) can be defined as
“the rails on which digital products and services are built to enable access to a range of essential society-wide functions.”
In practice, DPI typically consists of three primary pillars:
Digital Identification Systems: Providing citizens and organizations with verifiable digital identities. This includes foundational ID (e.g., national ID systems) and functional IDs (e.g., business registries, driver’s licenses) that allow entities to prove who they are online. This also includes the core of digital identity systems: VDRs.
Electronic Payments Systems: Enabling instant, low-cost digital transactions across the economy. Digital payment rails (such as real-time retail payment networks) ensure that individuals and businesses can transact seamlessly.
Data Exchange Systems: Facilitating the secure sharing of data with user consent. This includes data-sharing frameworks and protocols that allow personal or organizational data to flow safely between trusted parties (often under user control and with privacy protections).
These three pillars require a foundational Verifiable Data Registry (VDR) on which they can reliably operate and integrate. The role and function of VDRs as a foundational component within DPI will be explained in detail in the following chapter.
Crucially, DPI is not just about technology stacks but also about governance and standards. Effective DPI systems are “interoperable, modular, and built on open standards,” with regulatory and policy frameworks embedded in their design.
They are typically developed through public-private collaboration, ensuring the infrastructure serves broad public needs while harnessing private sector innovation. The “public” in DPI also implies inclusivity and accountability: much like public utilities, DPI should be accessible to all and subject to oversight so that it remains a trusted common good.
To convey DPI’s significance to a broad audience, it is helpful to compare it to energy infrastructure or other familiar utilities. Just as a reliable electrical grid underpins an industrial economy, DPI provides the digital “grid” that powers modern services. A national electricity grid delivers universal access to power, which in turn enables countless private appliances and industries — analogously, DPI provides universal access to digital capabilities (identity verification, payments, data sharing) that countless applications can leverage. In both cases, the infrastructure’s ubiquity, interoperability, non-discriminatory access, and information symmetry unlock widespread innovation and economic activity.
Additionally, both electricity and DPI require common standards (e.g., voltage standards or data protocols) and benefit from network effects — the more users connected, the greater the overall value. Policymakers increasingly recognize that
“similar to roads or electricity in the physical world, DPI aims to serve everyone and helps unlock a host of services.”
In other words, DPI is infrastructure, not just an application: it should be built and governed as a public utility that all services can rely on securely, rather than each service reinventing its own isolated system.
The EU’s Digital Strategy: Leading Digital Public Infrastructure Within the Single Market and Beyond EU Borders
The European Union is advancing comprehensive Digital Public Infrastructure initiatives designed to enhance digital sovereignty, interoperability, and secure data sharing across its Single Market and globally.
Central initiatives include the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet under eIDAS 2.0, enabling seamless digital identity verification and trust services for citizens and enterprises; sector-specific frameworks such as the European Business Wallet (EUBW) for secure business identity and credentialing; and the development of the digital euro to facilitate secure, accessible, and interoperable digital payments. Additionally, European efforts include Data Spaces — federated data-sharing ecosystems exemplified by projects like Gaia-X, Manufacturing-X, and energy data-X, aimed at fostering strategic data exchanges across critical industries.
The European Union’s international digital strategy emphasizes the EU’s ambition to play a global leadership role in DPI beyond its own borders, see the Joint Communication on an International Digital Strategy for the EU for more details.
Central to this strategy is the promotion of secure digital identities and interoperable Digital Public Infrastructures. By fostering partnerships and mutual recognition agreements globally — particularly with countries such as Japan, India, Brazil, and Ukraine — the EU seeks to facilitate seamless, secure, and trusted digital interactions internationally, establishing cross-jurisdiction trust and interoperability based on its eIDAS standards.
This strategy is a clear signal of the EU’s commitment to expanding a rules-based digital order that aligns with democratic values and human rights.
Notably, the EU’s emphasis on open-standards and open-source digital building blocks, cross-border interoperability, and integration of secure trust services underscores its role as a central actor in the global movement toward robust and inclusive digital ecosystems, significantly strengthening global trust and cooperation.
Through initiatives such as the Global Gateway and active collaboration with international frameworks, including the United Nations’ Global Digital Compact and Global Trust Registry, the EU’s approach positions it as a leading advocate for digital sovereignty and resilience worldwide.
Examples of DPI in Action
Real-world examples illustrate the DPI concept and its impact:
Open Credentialing Initiative (OCI): OCI is an example of specialized Digital Public Infrastructure tailored specifically for the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain. It establishes a standards-based approach to digital credentialing and decentralized identity, facilitating secure, interoperable, and verifiable data exchange among supply chain actors. Prominent industry stakeholders — including major pharmaceutical manufacturers, wholesalers, dispensers, technology providers, and Spherity— actively support OCI. The initiative has been officially endorsed by the Partnership for DSCSA Governance (PDG), a public-private partnership backed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the federal agency responsible for regulating pharmaceuticals, medical devices, food safety, and public health protection in the United States. OCI exemplifies DPI by effectively integrating digital identity verification and secure, standardized data exchange to meet stringent regulatory requirements, thus ensuring supply chain security, preventing counterfeit medicines, and strengthening traceability in the highly regulated pharmaceutical sector.
India’s India Stack (Aadhaar, UPI, DEPA): India has pioneered a comprehensive DPI approach. It began in 2009 with the launch of Aadhaar, a digital ID system assigning each resident a unique 12-digit identity number, which became the first pillar of DPI (identification). Aadhaar’s e-KYC (electronic Know-Your-Customer) capability allowed instant verification of identities, dramatically reducing the cost and time to onboard citizens to services. Building on this, in 2016 India introduced the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as the second DPI pillar (payments) — an interoperable, real-time payment network accessible via open APIs. UPI enabled any bank or fintech app to send/receive money instantly at near-zero cost, leading to a digital payments revolution. The results were striking: together Aadhaar and UPI vastly expanded financial inclusion (the proportion of Indian adults with bank accounts jumped from 25% in 2008 to over 80% by 2023). India then added a third layer known as the Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) — a consent-based data-sharing framework that allows individuals to securely share their personal data (e.g. financial or health records) with service providers of their choice. DEPA has been called the “data layer” of India Stack, aiming to “restore ownership and control over user data to its rightful owners” through a secure consent mechanism. In essence, Aadhaar bootstrapped digital identity, UPI enabled digital transactions, and DEPA now leverages the digital footprints to provide inclusive services (like easier credit access) while preserving privacy. India’s success has put DPI on the global policy agenda, and its components (e.g. the MOSIP open-source ID platform inspired by Aadhaar) are being adapted in other countries.
European Initiatives (EUDI Wallet, European Business Wallet, Data Spaces): The European Union is incorporating DPI principles in its digital strategy, particularly via the upcoming European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet under eIDAS 2.0 and various sectoral data space initiatives. The European Business Wallet (EUBW) is a recent proposal to extend the EUDI digital identity framework to legal entities (businesses). It is envisioned as “a strategic enabler for trusted digital identity, secure transactions, and regulatory automation across B2B and B2G ecosystems in the EU.” Unlike the citizen wallet which faces adoption challenges, businesses have strong incentives (compliance, cybersecurity, efficiency gains) to adopt the EUBW. The EUBW would allow companies to easily prove their identity, credentials (licenses, certifications), and authorizations when interacting across borders or with authorities. This is expected to reduce administrative friction, strengthen supply-chain trust, and even bolster cybersecurity via trusted identity data — indeed, it is noted that the EUBW “supports eIDAS 2.0… ensuring verifiable business identities and access control” and “strengthens Zero Trust security, mitigating risks of fraud [and] cyber warfare attacks on critical infrastructure.”. In parallel, Europe is investing in Data Spaces — federated data-sharing ecosystems in strategic sectors (industry, mobility, finance, health, etc.) as part of its Gaia-X and Digital Markets/Data Act agenda. For example, Manufacturing-X is a German-led, cross-sector initiative to create a decentralized data ecosystem for industry, enabling companies to share production and supply chain data securely and confidently. It builds on standards and protocols (like those demonstrated by Catena-X in the automotive sector) to ensure data interoperability and trust. Catena-X, in particular, is cited as “the first globally trusted and collaborative data ecosystem for the automotive industry,” enabling multi-tier supplier collaboration through a federated network approach. These efforts in Europe underscore a key point: DPI is not just about government services, but extends to public-private digital infrastructure that underpins entire economic sectors (much as the power grid powers industrial machinery as well as household appliances). European policymakers see such shared infrastructure as vital for competitiveness, resilience, and digital sovereignty in the face of global platform domination.
Energy Data Spaces: Building upon these efforts, the energy data-X project, as part of the broader Manufacturing-X initiative, exemplifies how DPI principles are applied specifically within the regulated energy sector. energy data-X aims to establish secure, standardized, and interoperable data-sharing frameworks tailored to energy-sector requirements, facilitating seamless sector coupling between energy, mobility, and manufacturing domains. Given the energy sector’s longstanding experience in managing public infrastructure, regulations, and providing essential public services, it serves as an ideal proving ground for DPI solutions that emphasize identity verification, trust frameworks, and secure data exchanges. Analogous to how energy grids underpin stable and accessible electricity distribution, the energy data-X initiative demonstrates how digital infrastructure can similarly underpin data-driven collaboration, resilience, and security in critical sectors. By positioning the energy industry at the intersection of identity, trust, DPI, and regulated public infrastructure, energy data-X contributes significantly toward building a European data space, strengthening digital sovereignty, and laying foundational standards for broader DPI adoption across regulated industries.
DPI provides the “common rails” on which myriad digital services can run. By establishing open, shared, and trusted infrastructure for identity, payments, and data, governments can spur innovation (as India’s fintech boom with UPI demonstrates) while also ensuring public oversight and inclusion. The analogy to energy infrastructure resonates: just as electrification transformed economies in the 20th century, robust DPI can drive digital transformation, but it requires foresight to build it as core public infrastructure. In the next sections, we focus on a critical piece of that infrastructure: verifiable data registries, which serve as the trust backbone of DPI’s identity and data layers.
Verifiable Data Registries (VDRs) and “Qualified” VDRs
At the heart of any trust-enabled digital ecosystem is the ability to verify “who is who” and “who is authorized to do what.” This is where Verifiable Data Registries (VDRs) come into play. According to the W3C’s decentralized identity architecture, a verifiable data registry is essentially “a system that acts as a source of truth by mediating the creation and verification of identifiers, keys, and other relevant data” needed to validate decentralized identity credentials. In simpler terms, a VDR is the trusted database or ledger where one can check the legitimacy of an identifier or credential issuer. For example, if a user presents a digital driver’s license (a verifiable credential), the verifier might query a VDR to confirm that the license number is indeed issued by the country’s motor vehicle authority and is still valid. The VDR in that case could be a government database or a blockchain where the license status is recorded.
Flexibility of VDR implementations: Notably, W3C’s definition of VDR is broad and technology-agnostic. A VDR could be a traditional trusted database operated by a government or institution (the “classic” option), it could be a Github-Repo, or it could be a distributed ledger or blockchain (the “modern” decentralized option), a Qualified Electronic Ledger (QEL), or even a peer-to-peer network. The key is that it serves as the reference point for verifying data such as public keys (for digital signatures), credential schemas, issuer identifiers, trust lists, and revocation lists.
This flexibility allows communities to choose the right tool for their needs — some might use a national public database as a VDR (for, say, verifying company registration numbers), whereas others might use a consortium blockchain as a VDR to verify globally decentralized identifiers (DIDs). For instance, many decentralized identity systems use public blockchains as VDRs to register DIDs and public keys; on the other hand, government-issued verifiable credentials might be checked against an official registry API. In all cases, the VDR’s role is to provide authoritative answers to questions like “Is X a valid identifier or credential as per an authoritative source?”
Trust Registries as a form of VDR: A concept gaining traction in the digital credential community is the “Trust Registry.” This is essentially a specialized VDR that lists which issuers (or verifiers) are trusted within a certain ecosystem or trust framework. For example, imagine a global COVID vaccination certificate system — a trust registry could list all national health authorities (and their public keys) authorized to issue vaccination credentials. When someone presents a vaccine credential, a verifier could check the trust registry to ensure the issuer is indeed one of the trusted health authorities. Trust registries are sometimes described as “DNS for trust” — a distributed lookup service to find authoritative sources of certain credential data. In the EU context, the term “trust list” is also used, such as the EU Trusted List of qualified trust service providers under eIDAS (which is essentially a public VDR of who is accredited to issue qualified certificates). The general principle is the same: a system-of-record for authoritative information that relying parties need to make trust decisions. Many such registries already exist in the offline world (lists of licensed doctors, accredited universities, certified companies, etc.), and the goal is to make them digitally verifiable and interoperable. The United Nations, for example, through UN/CEFACT, has recognized the need for a Global Trust Registry to serve as a “global index of trusted sources — not a central database, but a reference layer to answer the critical question behind every claim: ‘Says who?’”. This project aims to create a digitally signed “certificate of registration” (a verifiable credential) for any authoritative register (e.g., a national company registry), which can then be globally discovered and verified via the trust registry network. In essence, the UN initiative is building a federated VDR of VDRs, enabling one to verify the provenance of data across borders.
Integration of Verifiable Data Registries (VDRs) with Public Registries for Enhanced Trust
To ensure continuous trustworthiness and reliability, Verifiable Data Registries (VDRs) must be directly linked to authoritative public registries, such as business registries for enterprises and public entities. This integration enables real-time monitoring of changes, allowing credentials derived from these registries to remain consistently accurate and up-to-date.
By utilizing revocation registries, credentials can swiftly be revoked when underlying registry data changes — such as alterations in corporate status, license expiration, or loss of accreditation.
This direct linkage, a key outcome of the European Wallet Consortium (EWC), is particularly important for the European Business Wallet (EUBW) framework, significantly enhancing trust by reducing risks associated with outdated or fraudulent credentials, thereby maintaining high standards of compliance, transparency, and accountability essential for regulated digital environments.
Qualified VDRs — Raising the Bar for Trust and Assurance
The term “Qualified Verifiable Data Registry” is not yet a formal standard category, but by analogy and emerging practice we use it to mean a VDR service that meets high assurance requirements and is officially recognized or certified as part of the public trust infrastructure. The inspiration comes from the regulatory frameworks like the EU’s eIDAS, where trust services (e.g., digital signature providers, website certificates, etc.) can be “qualified” — indicating they are audited and supervised to meet strict standards, and therefore enjoy legal presumption of trustworthiness across all EU member states. We are witnessing a similar approach being extended to digital ledgers and identity networks:
Under the draft eIDAS 2.0 regulation, a new trust service is defined for “Electronic Ledgers”. Specifically, eIDAS 2.0 introduces the concept of a Qualified Electronic Ledger (QEL). A QEL is essentially a ledger service (likely a blockchain or DLT) that has been certified to provide certain guarantees. By law, “a qualified electronic ledger shall enjoy the presumption of the uniqueness and authenticity of the data it contains, of the accuracy of their date and time, and of their sequential chronological ordering within the ledger.” In other words, if data is recorded on a QEL, one can assume it hasn’t been tampered with and that the ledger provides a reliable timeline of records. Achieving the status of “qualified” means the ledger operator is a Qualified Trust Service Provider for electronic ledgers, meeting requirements set by regulators (on security, immutability, etc.). This move essentially extends the trust framework (previously applied to things like signatures and timestamps) to blockchain-based records, giving them a recognized legal status. A QEL is a concrete example of what we would call a “Qualified VDR,” since it’s a verifiable data registry (a ledger) that has formal recognition.
Another area is the notion of qualified issuers and registries for identity data. While not explicitly termed “qualified VDR,” the EU’s approach to digital identity wallets involves accredited identity providers, and likely trusted lists of attribute providers. For instance, eIDAS 2.0 will require that if a digital wallet presents certain attested attributes (like a qualification or license), the issuer of that attribute must be verified against an authoritative source. This implies a need for intermediaries or directories that can validate credentials against authoritative registers. A service that performs this (verifying that an attribute is from the official source) could be seen as a VDR function. If such services are certified, they become qualified components of the infrastructure.
In the broader sense, labeling a VDR as “Qualified” means it is explicitly trusted by a governance authority and typically subject to conformity assessment. What advantages does this bring? For one, it gives relying parties (and regulators) greater confidence in the data integrity and security of the registry. For another, it often facilitates mutual recognition: just as a Qualified Trust Service in one EU country must be accepted in all others, a qualified VDR could be a candidate for cross-jurisdictional trust. Imagine, for example, a qualified business registry — if Germany’s corporate register is issued as a verifiable credential under a qualified framework, any other country’s systems could automatically trust its authenticity without bespoke agreements, simplifying cross-border digital trade.
Technical and Governance Requirements: To be qualified, a VDR would likely need to meet criteria such as: data integrity protections (tamper-evidence, audit trails), high availability and reliability, stringent security (resistance to cyber-attacks), unique identification of records (no ambiguity or collisions in identifiers), and governance rules for who can write and update data. Many of these mirror properties inherent to well-designed distributed ledgers. In fact, the ETSI industry standards group on Permissioned Distributed Ledgers (PDL) highlights that DLTs provide “immutability, traceability, managed repudiation, and multi-party verifiability,” which open opportunities for new trust models. These qualities are exactly what one would want in a high-assurance registry of trusted data. ETSI’s work is paving the way by defining a reference architecture for ledger-based identity and trust services, which can inform how Qualified VDRs are implemented in practice. Additionally, ISO 22739:2020 provides a common vocabulary for blockchain and DLT, ensuring that terms like “ledger” and “smart contract” are well-defined across implementations. Such standards support clarity when certifying or comparing different VDR technologies.
VDRs are the infrastructural component that store and deliver the evidence needed for verifying digital claims. Making them “qualified” adds a layer of governance and assurance, which is increasingly desirable as these registries become part of critical public services. In the next section, we examine how these registries intersect with Zero Trust Architecture, a modern security paradigm that complements the use of verifiable, always-checked credentials and identifiers.
Zero Trust Architecture and the Role of Qualified VDRs
Traditional security models assumed that users and devices inside an organization’s network could be implicitly trusted. In contrast, Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) operates on the principle “never trust, always verify.” Every access request, by any user or system, must be authenticated and authorized as if it originated from an open network — no one is trusted by default, even if they have been previously verified or are inside a firewall. Key tenets of ZTA include explicit verification of identity, least privilege access, and continuous monitoring of trust for every session.
Implementing ZTA in a complex digital ecosystem (spanning cloud services, APIs, IoT devices, and so on) is non-trivial. It requires a robust method to consistently verify identities and credentials across domain boundaries and in real-time. Qualified VDRs provide critical support for ZTA principles by serving as the always-online, authoritative sources to check trust information. The following points illustrate how:
Strong Identity Verification: Under ZTA, knowing “who” is connecting is foundational. Passwords or static credentials alone are insufficient; systems need to validate user identities, device identities, and even software identities via reliable claims. A Qualified VDR (such as a distributed identity ledger or a certified directory) can be used to verify digital signatures and certificates presented by users/devices. For example, if an employee logs in with a decentralized ID credential, the system will query the VDR to ensure the credential was issued by the company’s trusted authority and has not been revoked. Unlike legacy directory services limited to one enterprise, a global or federated VDR allows verification of external partners or devices as well, which is crucial in multi-organization collaboration under ZTA.
Authorization and Attribute Validation: ZTA not only checks identity but also whether an entity is authorized for a specific action. This often involves additional attributes (roles, security clearance, certifications). Qualified VDRs can host trusted attribute registries — e.g., a registry of who is a licensed physician, a revocation list of a authorisation credential, or which API client has what data access permissions. Under eIDAS 2.0, this is reflected in the requirement of “verifying the verifier” in personal or enterprise data access: before a service provider can retrieve personal data from an EU Digital Identity Wallet, it must prove it is authorized to do so. This is achieved by checking the service provider’s identifier against a trusted list of accredited parties or against a trust chain of authorisation events. In ZTA terms, every data access request carries a verifiable token of the requester’s attributes, which the relying service checks via a VDR/trust registry before granting access. Thus, policy enforcement becomes a real-time verification of claims (e.g., “Is this device managed by our MDM and up-to-date?” or “Is this service certified to request health records?”) answered by queries to authoritative registries or by verifying a trust chain anchored in a trust registry.
Continuous and Contextual Trust Evaluation: A hallmark of Zero Trust is that authentication is not a one-time gate — it is continuously or repeatedly confirmed. This means systems must be able to re-check credentials or their validity periodically or upon changes in context. Qualified VDRs are well-suited for this because they provide up-to-date status information. For instance, a user’s access might be immediately revoked if their credential is suspended in the VDR (say an enterprise data space membership credential or an employee’s credential is revoked upon termination — any attempt to use it will fail against the registry). Modern decentralized identity protocols even allow for proofs of refresh where verifiers fetch the current status of a DID or certificate from the ledger each time. High-assurance VDRs ensure that these checks are reliable and fast, preventing stale or fraudulent credentials from slipping through.
Federation and Interoperability: In a Zero Trust model, especially across organizations, one cannot simply trust a partner’s network or assertions without verification. Qualified VDRs act as federation points where organizations publish and cross-recognize each other’s trust assurances. For example, within a supply chain consortium, each company can validate the credentials of another company’s software agent by checking a shared qualified ledger that lists all trusted participants and their public keys. This eliminates blind trust in certificates or API keys that could be compromised. It also scales trust: instead of each pair of companies establishing one-off agreements, they rely on the common registry (much like a DNS for trust). This is aligned with the idea of “Cooperation Beats Aggregation” — rather than all parties relying on one giant identity provider (aggregator), they cooperate through a network-of-networks where each participant’s trust info is verifiable on a shared infrastructure.
In practical terms, adopting qualified VDRs for Zero Trust might involve deploying technologies like decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable credentials for all entities (people, organizations, devices, services) and using trust registry protocols to validate them. The Linux Foundation’s Trust Registry Protocol (TRQP) mentioned earlier is one such emerging standard to let anyone query “Is entity X authorized for Y in ecosystem Z?” and get a yes/no from the authoritative source. This capability is fundamental to automate decisions in Zero Trust systems without manual configuration of every trust relationship.
The European Business Wallet example highlighted earlier explicitly notes ZTA benefits: by equipping businesses with verifiable identity credentials, it “strengthens Zero Trust security, mitigating risks of fraud, identity theft, and cyber warfare attacks on critical infrastructure”. Essentially, when every API call or transaction can carry a digitally signed, up-to-date proof of the actor’s identity and rights, and those proofs are instantly checkable against a trusted registry, the attack surface is significantly reduced. There is no longer a single sign-on token that, if stolen, grants broad access; instead each action is gated by fresh verification.
Qualified VDRs provide the trust fabric required to implement Zero Trust on a large scale. They ensure that no user or component is implicitly trusted — trust must be earned and is validated against a source of truth each time. In the next section, we consider how this infrastructure contributes to broader resilience and sovereignty goals, especially under the looming threats and challenges of today’s digital landscape.
Decentralized DPI (dDPI) and Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PET)
In emerging digital ecosystems, stakeholders increasingly utilize Decentralized Ledger Technology (DLT) or decentralized Qualified Electronic Ledger systems, such as the European Blockchain Service Infrastructure (EBSI), which may eventually achieve certification as a QEL serving as a (qualified) Verifiable Data Registry.
When a VDR is established using decentralized technology, it is termed Decentralized Digital Public Infrastructure (dDPI). The fundamental characteristic of a decentralized VDR is that it operates based on a consensus protocol, ensuring synchronized copies of the registry across multiple network nodes.
Consequently, enterprises or trusted privacy advocacy groups can maintain local copies, enabling localized reading and data lookup transactions without external logging. This significantly reduces the risk of generating sensitive metadata, such as tracking who accesses what information, from which organizations, and when — metadata that, if centrally logged, could lead to the emergence of monopolistic data intermediaries comparable to today’s major technology platforms.
To enhance privacy, dDPI must integrate advanced Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs). Many contemporary identity solutions already employ zero‑knowledge proofs (ZKPs) with selective disclosure mechanisms; some also utilize ring signatures, anonymizing signer identities while preserving transaction verifiability. Additionally, major cryptocurrency exchanges deploy secure Multi-Party Computation (sMPC) for secure key management, splitting private keys among multiple entities to mitigate single points of failure. Other PETs valuable for dDPI include onion routing, or homomorphic encryption.
Furthermore, DPI systems should be proactively designed to integrate post-quantum cryptography, ensuring long-term data protection against future quantum computing threats. This comprehensive approach is essential to guarantee confidentiality, privacy, and trust within decentralized digital public infrastructures.
Resilient Digital Ecosystems and Digital Sovereignty — The Need for DPI Now
The interplay of DPI and Qualified VDRs is not just a technical matter; it is deeply tied to strategic resilience and sovereignty in the digital age. Governments and institutions are recognizing that without control over core digital infrastructure, they risk exposure to multiple vulnerabilities:
Resilience against Cyber-Attacks: Cyber threats have grown in sophistication, ranging from ransomware that can cripple critical services to supply chain attacks that insert backdoors into widely used software. A robust DPI with strong trust anchors can localize and mitigate these threats. For example, if all software components are required to present verifiable credentials from a trusted registry of certified software publishers, it becomes much harder for an unknown malicious code to infiltrate. Likewise, if every privileged action in a government network requires verification against a hardware identity registry (ensuring the device is government-issued and known secure), an attacker who merely breaches network perimeter won’t get far without also compromising keys that are recorded on a ledger (which is considerably harder). In essence, embedding verifiable trust at the infrastructure level (via qualified registries of who and what is trusted) creates multiple checkpoints that attackers must subvert, increasing overall resilience.
Trust in the Age of AI and Autonomous Agents: The rise of AI, especially generative AI, brings tremendous opportunities but also challenges for authenticity. Deepfakes and AI-generated content can mimic voices, images, and behavior, potentially fooling systems or spreading misinformation. Autonomous agents (such as AI-driven bots) might interact with systems on behalf of humans or organizations, raising the question: how do we know an AI agent represents a legitimate principal and not an impostor? DPI equipped with VDR-based authentication can help answer that. For example, a human could delegate authority to an AI agent via a verifiable credential, which is registered on a ledger. Any action the AI takes would be accompanied by that credential proof, which can be checked against the registry for validity and scope. This way, even as interactions scale beyond direct human oversight, the web of verifiable credentials ensures accountability. On the flip side, any AI-generated artifact (like a digital document or media) could be signed with a credential tracing back to a known entity, making it easier to filter out or question unsigned (potentially fake) content. Policy makers are considering such measures (sometimes referred to as “digital watermarking” or content authenticity initiatives), and these ultimately connect back to having trusted registries of identity keys. Without a solid identity and trust infrastructure, societies may drown in an AI-generated sea of uncertainty about what is real. Thus, building DPI with trust registries is an urgent part of the defense against the “infodemic” of deepfakes and AI-driven fraud.
Reducing Surveillance and Dependency: The absence of public digital infrastructure often implies that citizens and businesses rely on a handful of private platforms for critical services — be it communications, payments, or identity verification (e.g., using social media accounts as login). This raises concerns about surveillance capitalism and even foreign surveillance if the platforms are not under local jurisdiction. By investing in sovereign DPI, governments provide domestic alternatives that adhere to national privacy standards. For instance, if a country has its own digital ID system (like Aadhaar in India or the eID in many European countries), citizens need not use a foreign email or social media account to identify themselves for government or banking services. This keeps sensitive personal data within controlled boundaries and subject to local data protection laws. Moreover, data localization can be more effectively implemented when local infrastructure exists to serve citizens’ needs. Qualified VDRs can also hold transparency logs — for example, a ledger could record every time a government agency accessed a person’s data (with that person’s consent token), creating an immutable audit trail that deters misuse and builds public trust.
Digital Sovereignty and Economic Independence: Echoing the earlier definition of digital sovereignty, having control over one’s digital destiny means owning the key platforms of the digital economy. DPI — especially identity and payment systems — are two such platforms. The EU’s push for digital sovereignty has seen measures like regulating big tech (Digital Markets Act, etc.), but also creating independent capabilities (e.g., European Payments Initiative for cards, or GAIA-X for cloud). Qualified VDRs fit into this picture as critical infrastructure for trust. If, hypothetically, a region relies on a foreign blockchain or big-tech-operated directory for verifying all its transactions, it risks exposure to external governance and failure modes. By developing domestic or federated VDR networks (like Europe’s proposed European Blockchain Services Infrastructure — EBSI, which could serve as a European-led VDR for certain public services), a region ensures that the rules of the game (standards, access, governance) are set by public interest and not solely by private interests abroad. This does not mean isolation — these registries can interoperate globally via standards — but it means each jurisdiction has a say in how trust is managed.
A salient insight from the RWOT “Cooperation Beats Aggregation” paper is pertinent here: a cooperative network-of-networks can achieve greater scale and innovation than a single centralized platform. Applying this to national and global infrastructure, it suggests that if nations and organizations cooperate by linking their DPI components (like trust registries) through common standards, the result is a “meta-platform” that provides far more value and resilience than any monolithic provider could. Each participant retains sovereignty (control over its part of the network) while gaining the network effect of a much larger ecosystem.
This is exactly the philosophy behind initiatives like the UN’s Global Trust Registry and the Trust Registry Query Protocol — they are not building one registry to rule them all, but rather a federation of many where each authoritative source can be discovered and queried in a standardized way.
For policy makers, the takeaway is clear: investing in DPI and especially the trust layer (VDRs) is no longer optional or experimental; it is a necessity for national security, economic development, and citizen rights in the digital era. Just as countries would not outsource the entirety of their power grid to foreign entities, they should not outsource the backbone of digital trust. The cost of inaction could be measured in increased cyber incidents, loss of competitive edge (as local innovators lack foundational tools), and erosion of public trust in digital systems. Conversely, by proactively building and regulating these infrastructures, policy makers can enable a thriving digital economy that is both secure and open, much like a well-lit, well-guarded public marketplace.
Standards and Conformity: Building Blocks for Widespread Trust
Throughout our discussion, the importance of standards and conformity assessment has been a recurring theme. Standards ensure that different components of DPI (across countries or sectors) can work together, and conformity programs ensure that those components meet the required level of quality and security. Here we highlight a few key frameworks and their role in enabling Qualified VDRs and DPI:
eIDAS 1.0 and 2.0 (European Trust Framework): The Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services regulation (eIDAS) established a groundbreaking pan-European framework for digital trust. eIDAS 1.0 (2014) provided standards for electronic signatures, digital certificates, timestamps, and created the concept of “Qualified Trust Service Providers” (QTSPs) — entities accredited to issue highly trusted digital attestations (signatures, seals, etc.) recognized EU-wide. This included an official Trust List of all QTSPs, essentially an EU-wide VDR for trust services. For example, a German citizen’s qualified electronic signature is trusted in France because France can check the EU Trust List to see that the issuing provider in Germany is qualified. Now, eIDAS 2.0 (expected ~2026/27) expands this framework to Digital Identity Wallets and new services. It introduces Qualified Attestations of Attributes (electronic credentials for attributes like diplomas, licenses), the aforementioned Qualified Electronic Ledgers, and generally paves the way for verifiable credentials to be used under a trust framework. The standards being developed (such as the reference architecture for the EUDI Wallet, file format standards, etc.) will allow different wallet implementations and registry systems to interoperate under the “Trust Services” umbrella. For DPI, this means governments can confidently adopt verifiable credentials knowing there is a governance regime to back them. It also means that a Qualified VDR under eIDAS (like a QEL) has a de jure trust level that markets and other governments can rely on. We can expect implementing acts and technical standards (many driven by ETSI) to detail requirements for security, performance, and data formats for these components. Policy makers in other jurisdictions might look to eIDAS as a template for how to formally recognize and supervise VDR-like services (for instance, an analog to QEL in their own legal system).
ISO/IEC Standards (Vocabulary and Security): ISO 22739:2020, as mentioned, gives a standardized vocabulary for blockchain and DLT. While it may seem abstract, having common definitions is vital when different systems need to achieve legal interoperability. For example, if a law or policy references a “secure audit trail using distributed ledgers,” ISO definitions ensure everyone understands the properties expected of that ledger. There are also security standards (ISO/IEC 27000 series) and privacy standards (ISO/IEC 27701 for data protection) that Qualified VDR providers would likely need to adhere to in order to be trusted. Another relevant work is ISO/IEC 18013–5 (standard for mobile driving license as a verifiable credential), which shows how to structure and verify a credential across jurisdictions — something trust registries will hook into (to know which transport authority can issue a license). The upshot is, by aligning DPI components with international standards, countries ensure that their infrastructure is compatible and credible internationally.
ETSI and CEN Standards (Technical Specs in EU): The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has been instrumental in providing detailed technical specifications to realize the policy vision of eIDAS. For instance, ETSI standards define formats for electronic signatures (XAdES, PAdES, CAdES), protocols for validation services, and standards for hardware security modules, etc., which QTSPs must follow. We can anticipate ETSI producing standards for “Electronic Ledgers” — perhaps specifying how to demonstrate immutability, how to timestamp entries, or how to interface with the ledger (APIs, query formats). Additionally, the CEN/CENELEC bodies in Europe often handle interoperability aspects; for example, defining a data model for trust lists or credential schemas that all wallets should accept. Outside the EU, bodies like NIST (in the US) are also developing digital identity guidelines (e.g., NIST SP 800–63) that, while not about VDRs per se, set the bar for how digital credentials should be issued and verified. The involvement of standardization organizations ensures that DPI doesn’t fragment into incompatible fiefdoms — instead, a credential or registry entry from one system can be understood and validated by another, much like how an electrical appliance can be used worldwide with the right adapter thanks to electrical standards.
Conformity Assessment and Certification: Having standards is one side of the coin; the other is ensuring systems truly meet them. For Qualified VDRs, independent audits and certifications will be key. Under eIDAS, for example, an organization seeking to operate a Qualified Electronic Ledger service would undergo an audit by an accredited conformity assessment body, which verifies compliance with all the requirements (security controls, operational reliability, etc.). Only then would a supervisory authority grant the qualified status. Similarly, digital wallets in the EU will likely require certification to ensure they protect user data and correctly implement protocols (indeed, the toolbox for EUDI Wallet envisages a common certification). For policy makers, this means when deploying DPI, it’s important to fund and mandate compliance programs — the frameworks that test and certify solutions against the standards. This gives all stakeholders (citizens, businesses, foreign partners) the assurance that, say, Country X’s trust registry or City Y’s data exchange platform meets the high standards and can be trusted to interoperate.
Standards and conformity assessments form the scaffolding that holds up the DPI edifice. They turn lofty concepts into concrete specifications and guarantees. A DPI approach grounded in strong standards will enable cross-border trust, which is why alignment with global initiatives is crucial. We now turn to the broader picture of global collaboration in digital infrastructure and how the concept of Qualified VDRs is resonating at that level.
Global Collaboration and Trust Infrastructure: UN/CEFACT and “Cooperation Beats Aggregation”
Digital infrastructure does not stop at national borders. Just as phone networks and the internet required global coordination, DPI and trust infrastructure benefit from international collaboration. Recognizing this, organizations like the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT), the World Bank, and others are actively promoting frameworks to connect trust networks across countries.
One notable effort is the UN/CEFACT Global Trust Registry project launched in 2025. Its ambition is to create a globally usable mechanism to verify the identities and credentials of organizations involved in cross-border trade and beyond. The project builds on prior UN work (the UN “Transparency Protocol” for supply chains) that defined a Digital Identity Anchor (DIA) — essentially a standard verifiable credential for organizations. The Global Trust Registry aims to generalize this so that any authoritative register (be it a national company registry, a regulator’s license database, a certification body’s registry) can issue a digitally signed proof of registration (like a digital certificate of incorporation), which can then be discovered and verified globally. The registry itself is envisioned not as a single database in New York or Geneva, but as a federated network of registries or a pointer system that refers verifiers to the right authoritative source. In effect, this is an implementation of a global VDR for organizations, answering queries like “Is company X legitimately registered and in good standing in country Y?” or “Is this exporter accredited by the relevant authority?”. By leveraging existing national registries and adding a verification layer, the system avoids duplication — it’s a “reference layer… leveraging existing registries owned by each national jurisdiction.”. This closely mirrors our earlier discussion: each national registry could itself be a Qualified VDR domestically, and the global trust registry is the network of these VDRs, with common standards to query and trust the exchanged data.
The success of such initiatives will depend on global standards and governance agreements — which are being addressed in parallel. For instance, the Trust Registry Query Protocol (TRQP) by the Trust Over IP Foundation is one candidate standard for how to technically query a trust registry over the internet.
UN/CEFACT and other standards bodies will likely converge on a set of specifications and even governance rules (for example, a recommendation for how jurisdictions should authorize and format their digital proofs of registration). Policymakers involved in forums like the Global Digital Collaboration Forum or trade facilitation committees should actively engage with these developments. It is an opportunity to ensure interoperability between national DPI initiatives and the global fabric.
The notion that “cooperation beats aggregation” is very pertinent in this context. In the digital identity space, that phrase encapsulates the idea that no single provider (or country) should dominate the identity or trust landscape; rather, interconnecting multiple systems leads to a more robust and innovative whole. We are witnessing this philosophy in action: Europe with its network of national eIDs bound by eIDAS, the UN creating a network of national registries, and industry coalitions like Trust over IP promoting multi-party governance models. The RWOT whitepaper argues that an “open, interoperable, portable, decentralized identity framework is a prime candidate for becoming [a] meta-platform” that unites many platforms. DPI with Qualified VDRs is essentially that framework at the public infrastructure level — a meta-platform enabling “network-of-network effects” where trust and data can flow across organizational and national silos. Each participant’s cooperation (by adhering to standards and sharing in governance) reduces the reliance on any aggregated monopolistic system. This also aligns with democratic values: no single entity (government or corporate) has unilateral control over people’s digital identities; instead, trust is distributed and checks-and-balances are in place via the cryptographic verifications and mutual oversight.
For German and EU policymakers, engaging in global standard-setting is also a means of projecting strategic influence. By contributing concepts like Qualified VDRs or QELs to international standards, they can shape an environment favorable to European principles (privacy, security, competition) abroad. We saw this with GDPR influencing global data protection norms; similarly, Europe’s push on digital wallets and ledgers might guide global norms for digital trust services. The alignment of the Global Trust Registry with EU’s thinking (it effectively requires something like EIDAS trust lists on a larger scale) shows a convergence that can be built upon.
In practical terms, policy makers should consider the following actions:
Ensure national authoritative registers (for businesses, professionals, vehicles, etc.) are upgraded to support verifiable credential issuance. This means allocating resources for those agencies to adopt standards (like W3C Verifiable Credentials) and to interface with global discovery services. A national business registry, for example, could become a Qualified VDR that not only serves local needs but is recognized internationally in the Global Trust Registry network.
Update or create legal frameworks that recognize digital credentials and their verification. This includes legal equivalence for digital vs paper certificates and liability frameworks for false claims.
Promote cross-border pilots (the UN project is already aiming for pilots in multiple registry types). Germany or EU could lead pilots for, say, verifying university degrees across countries using a network of academic registries, or supply chain credentials in automotive (tying into Catena-X, which could then link to international partners).
Use forums like UN/CEFACT, G20, ITU, and others to champion the idea that trusted digital public infrastructure is a global public good. This echoes the recent G20 declaration that highlighted DPI’s potential for sustainable development. Global cooperation can also help less-developed nations leapfrog by adopting proven open-source DPI components (e.g., MOSIP for identity) and joining trust networks instead of having to negotiate one-off trust with each counterpart.
Conclusion
Digital Public Infrastructure — comprising universal identification, payment, and data-sharing systems — is rapidly becoming as indispensable to economies as roads and electricity. The comparison is more than metaphorical: just as governments built physical infrastructure to unlock economic growth and provide public services, they are now called to build and steward digital infrastructure to enable the next stage of development. Qualified Verifiable Data Registries (VDRs), as argued in this paper, deserve focus as a pivotal component of that infrastructure. They are the trust hubs that allow digital interactions to proceed with confidence, enabling verifiable identity and credential checks that underpin everything from opening a bank account online to an AI agent executing a task on someone’s behalf.
We have examined how Qualified VDRs support digital sovereignty, by giving nations control over their trust services and reducing dependence on external gatekeepers. We have shown how they reinforce Zero Trust Architecture in cybersecurity, by operationalizing “always verify” through automated trust queries for every transaction. We also highlighted their role in resilience against emerging threats — providing authenticity guarantees in a world of AI-generated content and a backstop against systemic cyber risks. Moreover, we detailed how standards and regulatory frameworks (from eIDAS to ISO and ETSI specs) are converging to make such registries reliable and interoperable across borders.
The call to action for policymakers and institutional stakeholders is clear: treat digital public infrastructure as core nation-building. This means allocating political will, funding, and talent to initiatives like national digital IDs, payment platforms, and trust registries — and doing so in accordance with global best practices and open standards. The experiences of India, the EU, and others provide blueprints and evidence of DPI’s impact, whether it’s financial inclusion gains or streamlined business processes. The urgency is underscored by both opportunities (e.g., AI-driven economic leaps, digital trade) and threats (cyber attacks, disinformation) — acting sooner rather than later will differentiate those societies that harness digital change for good from those overwhelmed by it.
Finally, collaboration should be embraced over isolation. The Global Digital Collaboration Forum and UN/CEFACT work on the Global Trust Registry exemplify the multilateral approach needed. By cooperating on infrastructure, countries can collectively resist the concentration of digital power and ensure a more equitable digital economy. In the spirit of “Cooperation Beats Aggregation,” a networked approach to trust will yield a stronger, more innovative ecosystem than any single provider could achieve. Digital public infrastructure, with Qualified VDRs at its core, can thus be seen as a digital commons — one that nations collaboratively build and govern for mutual benefit, much like managing international postal services or global telecommunications in earlier eras.
In conclusion, Qualified Verifiable Data Registries elevate the trustworthiness of Digital Public Infrastructure, turning it into a strategic asset for sovereignty, security, and societal resilience. Policymakers and stakeholders, especially those convening at forums like UN/CEFACT and the Global Digital Collaboration Forum, should champion this vision. By doing so, they will lay the groundwork for a future where digital interactions worldwide are instant, trustworthy, and universally accessible — a true public utility for the digital age.
Appendix: Key Requirements for a Qualified Verifiable Data Registry as a Foundational Component of Digital Public Infrastructure
Given their critical role within Digital Public Infrastructure and their importance for sovereign infrastructures, Qualified Verifiable Data Registries must adhere to the following essential requirements:
1. Long-term Non-repudiation
Ensure persistent authenticity, integrity, and immutability of data.
Provide verifiable historical records essential for regulatory compliance, legal validity, and auditing.
2. Elimination of Metadata Logging and Privacy Protection
Facilitate secure and decentralized lock-up and verification methods.
Avoid recording or logging unnecessary transactional metadata, thus aligning with privacy regulations such as GDPR.
3. Inclusive, Accessible & Non-discriminatory
Ensure equitable, universal, and non-discriminatory access.
Provide equal and fair access to qualified VDR information and data to all authorized participants, ensuring transparency and reducing information asymmetries. Enable participants to make informed decisions based on consistent, reliable, and universally accessible VDR data.
Enable broad participation across all (regulated) sectors without exclusion due to technical, economic, geographic, or demographic barriers.
4. Foundational & Extensible
Enable easy integration with existing systems, processes, and future technologies.
Allow flexibility and scalability to adapt to evolving needs, innovation, and sector-specific requirements.
5. Interoperable & Open-standard
Adhere strictly to international, widely recognized standards (e.g., ISO 22739, ETSI, CEN/CENELEC, eIDAS).
Ensure seamless cross-platform, cross-border, and cross-sector interactions, thus supporting global compatibility.
6. Publicly Governed & Accountable
Operate under transparent, publicly accountable governance frameworks.
Clearly define responsibilities, oversight mechanisms, and regulatory compliance requirements to foster public trust and confidence.
7. Crypto Agility
Design and implement cryptographic mechanisms to enable rapid and seamless adaptation to new algorithms, protocols, and standards.
Ensure future-proofing and resilience against cryptographic vulnerabilities, protecting data integrity, security, and privacy over time.
8. Qualified Status (According to Standards)
Achieve formal qualification status in accordance with recognized standards such as CEN/CENELEC JTC 19 and eIDAS 2.0.
Ensure eligibility for deployment within critical infrastructure and regulated use cases, reinforcing trust, regulatory compliance, and operational integrity.
9. Decentralized Infrastructure for Cybersecurity and ZTA
Employ decentralized architectures to enhance cybersecurity resilience and align with Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) principles, minimizing risks associated with single points of failure and centralized vulnerabilities.
Support continuous, real-time verification and validation processes critical for maintaining robust cybersecurity defenses.
