Ethereum Public Infrastructure and Commons

Preserving and scaling user self-sovereignty in public systems — where people hold the final say over their identities, credentials, assets, and verifiable claims.

EPIC is a team within the Ethereum Foundation. The views on this site are EPIC's, not an official Ethereum Foundation policy position. We work with governments, multilateral organizations, and civil society so that when public institutions adopt Ethereum-based infrastructure, it strengthens — not trades away — censorship resistance, resilience, openness, privacy, and security.

EPIC exists to serve self-sovereign users: the person who must prove a credential without handing a platform their full history; the aid recipient who needs portable identity across borders; the verifier who checks an attestation without calling a vendor API; the citizen who should retain exit paths when institutions change. Public engagement is a means to that end — not the end itself. We map where Ethereum primitives can expand what those users can do independently, and we support pilots that pass the walkaway test: a user with the public spec and their own data can verify claims, switch registries or wallets, and continue without permission from EPIC, the original operator, or the issuing institution. Operator continuity alone is not sufficient.

Why this work matters

Public institutions manage critical systems: identity, payments, registries, service delivery, supply chains, and data governance. Many of these systems remain fragmented, opaque, or difficult to modernize — and too often they capture users inside vendor stacks with no credible exit.

Ethereum offers primitives for coordination and programmable trust without requiring a central gatekeeper. Meaningful adoption depends on careful design and long-term alignment with user sovereignty. EPIC supports that process — and publishes what we learn in the open.

Areas of engagement

The map organises research domains where Ethereum primitives may be relevant. Listing a domain is not a commitment to an active EPIC workstream.

• Digital identity and credentials
• Public finance and payments
• Registries and records
• Supply chain transparency
• Humanitarian coordination
• Data governance and privacy
• Climate reporting and MRV
• Education and workforce credentials

Our published work today concentrates on open mapping, the PoC template, and the Carbon MRV proof-of-concept. Other domains are documented for community reference unless marked otherwise on the map.

What EPIC will not do

EPIC will not prescribe architectures for governments or multilaterals. We publish patterns, questions, templates, and minimal proof-of-concepts; choosing a stack, vendor, or legal framework remains with institutions and affected users. EPIC will not lend Ethereum Foundation reputational capital to coerced enrolment. We do not treat mandatory digital ID, benefits gating without offline alternatives, or humanitarian registration without informed consent as successes to promote — regardless of whether they use Ethereum. EPIC will not treat institutional sovereignty as user self-sovereignty. A state or agency controlling keys, revocation, and verification endpoints is not "self-sovereign" because the ledger is public. Our unit of analysis is the person who must live with the system — not the institution that procures it.

Vision

We aim for a future where people and institutions can use Ethereum to build systems that are verifiable, interoperable, resilient, and accountable — aligned with open, global standards and with users retaining the final say.

EPIC's role is not to promote technology for its own sake but to ensure that when Ethereum is used in public systems, it is done thoughtfully and in service of long-term public value — and of the individuals who must live inside those systems.

From the blog

Updates and resources on public infrastructure and sovereign tools.

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