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swiyu (Switzerland)

Last modified: 2026-10-28

Description

The Swiss state-run trust infrastructure and wallet for the E-ID, defined by the Swiss-E-ID-Act-BGEID and Swiss-E-ID-Ordinance-VEID (eID-Legal-Framework). Developed in the open on GitHub (swiyu-Technical-Documentation).

Layer Choice
Protocols OpenID4VCI 1.0, OpenID4VP 1.0, BLE, JWE (Communication-Protocols)
Identifiers DIDs with did-webvh-Method v1.0 (v0.3, still called did:tdw, in the 2025 public beta)
Credential format SD-JWT VC draft 15 (IETF-SD-JWT-VC) over SD-JWT RFC 9901 (IETF-RFC9901-SD-JWT); the 2025 public beta used SD-JWT VC draft 4 with SD-JWT draft 10
Signatures ECDSA P-256 (NIST-FIPS-186-5)
Revocation IETF-OAuth-Token-Status-List (draft 20), split into several lists
Holder binding Hardware-bound keys in the Android / Apple secure element, bound during OID4VCI issuance; software-based binding announced for later
Registries Base registry (cryptographic, DIDs) and trust registry (verified issuers / verifiers, decision-assistive prompts) — swiyu-Trust-Protocol v2.0
Rendering Overlays-Capture-Architecture with wallet-specific extensions
Unlinkability Batch issuance of single-use SD-JWTs; ZKPs not yet part of the design

The trust infrastructure has two registries: the base registry provides the cryptographic registry (DIDs) with its validation capabilities, and the trust registry lists verified issuers and verifiers so that the wallet can show decision-assistive prompts (swiyu-Trust-Protocol). For rendering, the swiyu team extends Overlays-Capture-Architecture, which is generic, with extensions for showing credentials in a mobile wallet.

Status (October 2026)

The E-ID Act was accepted in the referendum of 28 September 2025. The launch, first planned for summer 2026 and then for December 2026, was postponed on 30 June 2026 without a new date: the online issuance process gets extra protection against malware on the device and better deepfake detection. The trust infrastructure is expected to go live in the first half of 2027, independently of the E-ID (FOJ-E-ID-Timeline-2026). Until then, issuers and verifiers test against the public sandbox, whose stack is the one in the table above (swiyu-Technical-Documentation).

Privacy

Unlinkability relies on batch issuance of single-use SD-JWT credentials: the salted-hash format shows the same issuer signature and hash list in every presentation, so the wallet must use a fresh credential each time, and colluding issuer and verifiers can still link presentations (Privacy-Requirements). Revocation uses the IETF Token Status List, split into several smaller lists (Status-Lists). ZKPs are not part of the current design; the eid-privacy project showed that ZKPs can be added on the holder side over the unmodified swiyu SD-JWT, including holder binding (DHG26-MS4, Holder-Binding).

Analyses and demos

Resources