GC25 – Global Digital Collaboration – July 1–2, 2025

At Global Digital Collaboration on July 2nd, a full day of sessions co-curated by DIDAS and partners will address how privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) and trustworthy governance models can become core enablers of digital trust across sectors and jurisdictions.

The day begins with a high-level update session featuring SPRIND, Google, EPFL, Johannes Kepler University, and others. It will explore the current maturity, post-quantum readiness, and practical deployment of PETs such as BBS+, SD-JWT, and ZK-mDoc. The session aims to establish shared terminology and frameworks for unlinkability and selective disclosure across global credential ecosystems.

In parallel, the e-democracy workshop series (Part 1 & 2), led by the Center for Digital Trust (C4DT) at EPFL, DIDAS, the Human Colossus Foundation, and other civil society actors, will explore how digital services like e-ID and e-collecting e-voting and related challenges which must be redesigned for resilience to protect public trust, prevent fraud, and ensure accountability. The sessions aim to define foundational principles for a trustworthy digital democracy, co-created by experts in law, governance, cryptography, and policy.

Running alongside, a collaborative mapping session by Johannes Kepler University, Orange, Ethereum researchers, DIDAS, EUDI and other Global Ecosystems and pilot teams are invited to identify and classify global use cases where PETs-particularly zero-knowledge proofs-are essential. The session will help align performance and privacy requirements across deployment contexts, feeding into implementation roadmaps and standards discussions.

In the afternoon, a deep dive on unlinkability will be led by experts from Google, SPRIND, EPFL and the Linux Foundation’s decentralized trust initiatives. This session will focus on the risks of issuer–relying party collusion in credential ecosystems, and why unlinkability is non-negotiable for use cases like transport and location-sensitive infrastructure.

Later, a technically grounded session titled “ZKProofs: From Crypto Potential to Regulatory Acceptance” will bring together Google, ETSI, and NIST to map out viable ZKP schemes, their mobile-readiness, and interoperability features. The goal is to bridge the gap between cryptographic innovation and institutional trust, and to align stakeholders around a roadmap for responsible, cross-border adoption and acceptance.

The day concludes with a multi-stakeholder roundtable moderated by DIDAS with invitees from the ITU, the OpenWallet Foundation, LF Decentralized Trust, OECD, UNHCR the Swiss confederation, the EU Commission and other country delegates and potential funding partners to explore long-term collaboration structures. This final session will address how to sustain PET development through ongoing working groups, interoperable governance, and shared funding models.

 

Public Sector & Multilateral Institutions

• Swiss Confederation
• European Commission
• ITU (International Telecommunication Union)
• OECD
• UNHCR
• SPRIND (Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, Germany)
• EUDI Pilot Teams (various EU member states)

 

Research & Academia

• EPFL – École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
• C4DT – Center for Digital Trust (EPFL)
• Johannes Kepler University Linz
• Ethereum Research Community

 

Civil Society & Ecosystem Actors

• DIDAS – Digital Identity and Data Sovereignty Association
• Digital Society Association (Switzerland)
• Human Colossus Foundation
• Other invited civil society contributors

Private Sector & Standards Bodies

• Google
• Orange
• Linux Foundation – Decentralized Trust Initiative
• OpenWallet Foundation
• ETSI – European Telecommunications Standards Institute
• NIST – U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology
• LF Decentralized Trust

Core Themes

• Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), ZKPs, unlinkability
• Verifiable credentials, digital identity, selective disclosure
• Trust infrastructure governance, interoperability, post-quantum security
• E-democracy, civic trust, institutional resilience
• Multi-stakeholder collaboration, sustainable funding, global alignment

This collaborative agenda reflects a global commitment to building privacy-preserving, interoperable, and inclusive digital ecosystems with shared responsibility across sectors.