category.decentralised_id.label

Who holds the credential, and can the issuer revoke it without you?

Does verification still work if the vendor's servers go down?

Is biometric enrolment acceptable to your users and lawful in your markets?

Onchain name and text records; proves key control, not human uniqueness. Strongest on credential custody & revocation power (9/10): The name is an ERC-721 held in the user's own wallet and its text records are written by the owner; no company can revoke it and there is no issuer to go bankrupt. The real termination risk is economic rather than political: registration is a lease, and non-payment of the $5/year forfeits the name and every identity… Weakest on biometric & pii handling (documented) (7/10): No biometrics, no documents, no KYC, nothing collected — the smallest attack surface here because there is no store to breach. Held at 7 rather than 10 because the privacy failure mode is inverted: text records (email, com.twitter, avatar) are world-readable by design, and a persistent human-readable handle… Published price: '$5 USD per year' for names of 5+ characters, '$160 USD per year' for 4-character names, '$640 USD per year' for 3-character names (3 is the minimum length). Priced in ETH at registration time, plus Ethereum L1 gas for registration, renewal and every record…

Best for: Credential custody & revocation power — 9/10

Open-source ZK credential stack; wallet-held credentials, self-hostable issuer node. Strongest on credential custody & revocation power (8/10): Privado's documentation is explicit that 'an Identity Holder carries their personal data, in the form of VC, within their wallet' and that the wallet 'stores the private key of a user, fetch VCs from the Issuer' — the credential is genuinely user-held, not a row in Privado's database. Held at 8 because issuer-side… Weakest on enforcement record & product continuity (5/10): No regulatory actions on record, but the worst brand-continuity record here after Civic: Polygon ID spun out of Polygon Labs to become Privado ID in June 2024, and the same team launched Billions in February 2025 with $30m raised. Documentation still ships a Mumbai-to-Amoy testnet migration guide for a testnet dead… Published price: No price list published; every figure requires a sales call. Privado ID's materials present the software as open source and free to use, with revenue taken from credential transaction fees (a percentage per transaction), cloud-wallet onboarding fees per new…

Best for: Credential custody & revocation power — 8/10

Public onchain registry of humans, video-verified, Kleros-arbitrated, no operating company. Strongest on verification without the vendor (10/10): The reference point for the whole category: registry membership is a contract read on Ethereum or Gnosis. No API key, no developer portal, no rate limit, no terms of service, and no company whose bankruptcy or national ban could take verification offline. This is the only provider here that passes the tie-break test… Weakest on biometric & pii handling (documented) (2/10): The category's sharpest trade-off, and it lands badly: registration requires submitting a video of your face plus a profile photo and display name into a public, permanent onchain registry. There is no encryption, no selective disclosure, no ZK layer and no deletion path — anyone in the world can watch every… Published price: No price published; registration requires 'a refundable deposit' whose amount is not stated on the docs pages I could load, plus chain gas. Kleros docs emphasise the Gnosis Chain deployment specifically 'to reduce fees'. Challenges are 'resolved by Kleros…

Best for: Verification without the vendor — 10/10