Implementation Model
Every use case in this section makes the same claim: verifiable trade is more scalable, higher integrity, and cheaper than the alternatives. This page explains the model that makes those claims hold.
The core idea
The authoritative sources of trust in trade already exist — national business registers, customs, intellectual-property and land registers. They have always been the authority. The only gap is that they have not made that trust digitally verifiable.
This model closes that gap with decentralised verifiable credentials (VCs) and DIDs, anchored on those existing national authorities. It does not insert a new intermediary, network, or platform between the trading parties — and that single choice is what makes it scale.
Centralised vs decentralised
| Centralised / intermediated | Decentralised (this model) | |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | A separate intermediary engages each business individually | The national register issues once; every registered business is covered |
| Documents | Routed through network hubs, reformatted, fee-metered | Issued peer-to-peer as VCs — no hub, no fee |
| Data security | Intermediary honeypots of sensitive commercial data | No intermediary store; identity from the source of truth |
| Recipient | Must be on the network (else fall back to PDF) | None — every document is human- and machine-readable |
| Domestic vs cross-border | Separate networks and builds | One architecture serves both |
| Adoption | Driven by legal mandate (high cost, low benefit) | Driven by real value, via systems of record |
How it works
- Identity comes from the authority, not an intermediary. One uplift of a national register makes verifiable identity available to all registered businesses — and can leverage national digital-identity systems that many economies already run. (See Identity Anchoring.)
- Documents are verifiable credentials, issued peer-to-peer. No routing hubs, no per-transaction fees, no intermediaries reformatting and storing the data. (See Portable Credentials.)
- Every document is both human- and machine-readable, so it works regardless of the recipient’s systems — there is no network-membership assumption.
- One architecture serves domestic and cross-border trade — every exporter also trades locally, so a single implementation covers both.
- Transferable records prove control, not just authenticity, through a standardised protocol rather than a proprietary platform — the key to scaling electronic bills of lading and similar instruments. (See Transferable Records.)
- Adoption is led by the systems of record — the accounting, ERP, carrier, and banking software businesses already use (optionally via business wallets) — not by a technology platform selling a single solution.
Why it is better
- More scalable — because there is no shared network or platform that every party must join, the model works across dynamic, multi-party, multi-jurisdiction trades that defeat platform approaches.
- Higher integrity — identity from the source of truth, tamper-evident credentials, and cryptographically provable control mean fraud is detectable without trusting any intermediary.
- Cheaper to implement — a small, finite set of one-time uplifts (registers, systems of record, verifiers) replaces recurring network, transaction, and intermediary costs; marginal cost per business and per document approaches zero.
Learn more
The full rationale — including why the centralised identity-intermediary and network-hub (“4-corner / 5-corner”) models are the wrong choice — is set out in research/decentralised-model-case.md in the project repository. How the value and cost of this model are quantified is summarised in Assessment Methodology.