How many people does it take to build identity infrastructure for Europe?

How many people does it take to build identity infrastructure for Europe?

In my case: one. Plus a 79-year-old on the advisory board who refuses to nod along to anything she doesn't understand.

I get asked this a lot, usually by someone from an organisation that has a department for it. So here it is plainly, without the founder-myth varnish.

I started in 2024, in Crevillent, a town near Alicante. Before that came twenty-four years of telecommunications in this province: one of the first internet providers here from 1998, later a radio network that ended up at more than 160 masts across roughly 12,000 square kilometres — mostly for people in the countryside who had no other option. I sold it in 2022. I taught myself to program in 1984, at nine years old, on an Apple IIe.

This year the age proof passed the official conformance tests of the OpenID Foundation, the body behind the standards the national wallets are built on. In October I showed it live at the EU conference EUDI Unfold #5 in Nijmegen, from a watch.

None of that makes this a safe bet, and I won't pretend otherwise. It does mean the thing exists.

Thursday it's out.

hashID.