Cardano Foundation announced the development of the Identity Wallet. The wallet will enable the creation of a decentralized identity (DID). It will support new and existing identity standards, multiple ecosystems, and frameworks.

The Cardano Foundation’s announcement of the development of a new wallet came as a surprise to the community. We can speculate if it was a Christmas present. In any case, we can look forward to another product that can support adoption and bring new functionality that has been talked about for a long time.

For the Cardano ecosystem, the topic of decentralized identity is an old one. Cooperation with the Ethiopian government was announced in Africa Special. It was agreed to build a system providing a decentralized identity to the education sector, i.e. to pupils and teachers. An identity management solution named Atala PRISM was to be used. Cardano was to be used as public infrastructure.

I expected Atala PRISM to be available to the entire ecosystem and to integrate with Cardano wallets much sooner. The first official announcement of a wallet supporting DID came from the IOG team. The IOG team is working on the Lace wallet, which should also support DID in the future.

Cardano Foundation introduces Identity Wallet. It is already obvious from the name that the key feature will be the support of a decentralized identity. This is a feature that can set this wallet apart from others and move the crypto industry closer to the Web3 world. However, I expect many other wallets to support DID in the future.

Identity Wallet will be a wallet compatible with W3C standards. Initially only available for the Cardano ecosystem and later for other blockchains. In this regard, the target audience is the same as in the case of Lace Wallet. Identity Wallet can enable the onboarding of all users into the Cardano ecosystem. Unifying the user interface and making it easier for users to use on-chain services regardless of the specific blockchain is important for entering Web3.

Identity Wallet will support multiple identity and credential standards. It will be possible to use the…