The Pacific island nation of Palau is furthering its partnership with decentralized identity protocol RNS.ID to deploy digital residency IDs (DIDs) on the Solana blockchain.

The launch of Solana-based IDs was announced yesterday by the official RNS.ID Twitter account. The company claims that “this marks the first time a sovereign nation issues legal identity on Solana.”

The country launched its digital residency program in 2022, which grants global citizens residency backed by Palau. But the people who acquire them don’t have to physically live there. The nation minted its first Legal DID, or decentralized ID, in September 2023 on Ethereum—with none other than Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in attendance.

https://x.com/RNS_global/status/1816316977226604925

The RNS.ID platform lets users apply for a Palau digital residence card for $248. Those residencies allow for a visa extension up to 180 days, while also providing anonymity for people who want to use cryptocurrency exchanges that they might otherwise be barred from accessing because of their location.

“It’s exciting to see Palau using Solana now for their IDs. From the documentary we did on the ID system they’re building we could see they had the right ideas at the right time and were getting some market traction. I expect that continue now with this new initiative,” George Harrap, co-founder of Step Finance told Decrypt.

The Palau government enforces a vetting process on all applicants—including anti-money laundering and identity verification checks, which take up to 10 days. A recent announcement claims that RNS.ID has so far issued 7,338 digital residencies to its users since September 2023.

On-chain decentralized IDs

Decentralized identity systems have long been pitched as some of the top applications of blockchain technology with the most far-reaching implications. May reports indicated that Microstrategy—famous for its Bitcoin (BTC) accumulation strategy—is developing a decentralized identity system built on the world’s first blockchain.

MicroStrategy co-founder and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor explained at the time that the system in question would be based on Ordinals-like inscriptions. Similarly, last year Shiba Inu developers unveiled that they were working on their own digital identity systems as well.

Another major player in the space of decentralized identity is Worldcoin, a company that can also pride itself on the participation of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

In February, Worldcoin also announced that it will implement a solution for its World ID to be used to verify the identities of e-sport players.

The initiative was developed in partnership with crypto-powered e-sports tournament platform Community Gaming, and aims to allow tournament participants to “prove their personhood.” That would be primarily done by scannin their irises with a device that Worldcoin proponents call the Orb.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.