DIGID - Dignified Identities in Cash Programming

The DIGID Project (Dignified Identities in Cash Programming) is a humanitarian initiative launched in 2020 that implements decentralized digital identity solutions to help vulnerable populations without official identification access humanitarian aid and cash assistance. The project is led by a consortium including the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Norwegian Red Cross, Norwegian Refugee Council, and Save the Children Norway.

The technical implementation uses the Gravity Core Package, a JavaScript implementation of W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials standards built on the Tezos blockchain. Key features include:

• Interoperable credentials that can be shared between different humanitarian organizations
• Zero-knowledge proofs for privacy-preserving identity verification
• Support for both digital and paper-based QR code credentials for users without phones
• Integration with existing humanitarian cash transfer systems like RedRose

The project has demonstrated significant real-world impact through pilots in Kenya, where it enabled the Kenya Red Cross Society to provide cash assistance to previously excluded beneficiaries without official IDs. Notable achievements include:

• Reducing beneficiary verification time to ~1 minute
• Lowering credential costs to $0.30 vs $2-5 for traditional smart cards
• Enabling 95% of beneficiaries in Turkana region without IDs to receive aid
• Successfully testing interoperability between different DID solutions (Gravity and Tykn)

The project represents one of the first implementations of interoperable decentralized identity in humanitarian contexts, with ongoing expansion to support refugees and displaced persons in Uganda and Kenya.