Bhutan to Anchor National Digital ID on Ethereum by Early 2026

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : The move "shows that governments are finally waking up to the idea that identity doesn't have to be centralized to be trusted," Kirill Avery, founder and CEO of Alien, a decentralized network for real humans and verifiable AI agents, told Decrypt.
46% : "Decentralized digital identity empowers people by giving them more secure control over their data and their online lives," Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, said in a statement shared with Decrypt. Bhutan's "embrace of an open architecture on Ethereum" resonates with how the chain sees its purpose of driving "meaningful, positive change through open-source technology," Buterin added. Launched in 2023, the system initially used W3C identity standards and operated in partnership with Input Output Global, the developer of Cardano, as part of early testing in self-sovereign identity.
46% : "Bhutan's experiment might push other governments to think beyond control and toward interoperability, but true self-sovereign identity can't exist on infrastructure that anyone, including the state, can unilaterally monitor."

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.