Who uses DIDComm?

The following guest post was contributed by Leadpoint System (LPS), who initiated the DIDComm survey and collaborated with DIF on its promotion.

Next week, DIF will host a breakfast at IETF on July 22, to discuss the implications of the survey results on DIDComm. The survey, led by Leadpoint System and promoted by DIF, shows significant uptake of DIDCommas a messaging protocol. While the EUDI wallet has specified the OpenID4VC protocol, it turns out that many applications worldwide are opting to explore more peer-to-peer architectures based on DIDComm. The survey also shows that this adoption is not limited to a single industry, with implementations spanning digital identity, government services, enterprise credentialing, financial services, AI agents, and cross-organizational data exchange. 

What the numbers say

DIDcomm and Leadpoint System publicized the survey over 3 months, gleaning 29 responses from countries worldwide, including India, the US, Germany, Brazil, Switzerland, Australia, Portugal, and Canada. While most of the respondents were companies, a few were NGOs or government organizations.

Of the 29 respondents, 14 have deployments in production today. In terms of the number of users, altogether the deployments represent more than 25 million humans using DIDComm, with millions of transactions daily. The most common use of DIDComm are in identity wallets for credential issuance, with 24 of the 29 respondents applying DIDComm to those flows. Agent-to-agent communication was also common, with 22 respondents using DIDComm. 

The results offer only a glimpse into who is using DIDComm, because only those who saw the callout from DIF have filled in the survey. Yet, even this small sampling shows real-world implementation and viability and represents strong evidence for hardening the DIDComm standard at a more formal standards body. To that end, DIF will be exploring IETF as a potential direction for the standard.

Anyone who is interested in supporting us for moving DIDComm forward, either by supporting us in IETF, or by helping fund the effort to move DIDComm forward, please reach out to ed@identity.foundation. If you will be attending IETF 126, please join us for breakfast on July 22 in Vienna.

LPS as a partner

Leadpoint System (LPS) initiated this survey to better understand how decentralized identity technologies are being adopted in real-world production environments. As a company developing blockchain infrastructure and decentralized identity solutions, we wanted to move beyond assumptions and gather evidence directly from organizations building identity wallets, credential platforms, AI agents, and enterprise applications.

The survey was designed to better understand where DIDComm is delivering value today, what challenges remain, and which areas require further standardization. Through our collaboration with the DIF, we were able to reach implementers across multiple continents and collect valuable feedback from organizations already deploying DIDComm in production.

From our perspective, the results confirm that DIDComm is already supporting production systems serving millions of users while continuing to evolve alongside the broader decentralized identity ecosystem.

Why applications use DIDcomm

DIDComm is a secure, private, transport-agnostic messaging protocol that enables people, organizations, and software agents to communicate directly using decentralized identifiers (DIDs). Every message is authenticated and encrypted without relying on a centralized identity provider.

Using DIDComm has advantages over OpenID4VC in specific applications. The primary reason cited for use of DIDComm is the persistence over multiple interactions. One channel supports arbitrary, long-lived, bidirectional communication. The channel does not need to be rebuilt for every interaction, so the trust can be maintained over time. DIDComm is agnostic to the transport layer, working over HTTPS, Bluetooth, push, sockets, and even offline. Another advantage of DIDComm is that it’s lightweight, and it does not require an identity provider or session server in the loop. 

What the survey tells us

Beyond demonstrating adoption, the survey highlights several important trends.

Although OpenID4VC has become an important protocol in ecosystems such as the European Digital Identity Wallet, organizations often choose DIDComm where persistent, secure, peer-to-peer communication is required. Respondents consistently pointed to long-lived communication channels, transport flexibility, and decentralized trust as important reasons for deployment.

The survey also revealed that interoperability and adoption remain the adopters' largest challenges, cited by more than half of respondents. Lack of tooling, implementation complexity, and documentation were also frequently mentioned. Interestingly, many organizations are not choosing between DIDComm and OpenID4VC—they are implementing both, selecting each protocol according to the requirements of specific user flows and architectures.

Another clear takeaway is that implementers are looking for stronger international standardization. Many respondents indicated that formal recognition through an international standards organization would improve interoperability, increase customer (and regulator) confidence, encourage ecosystem growth, and reduce adoption barriers for enterprise and government deployments.

See you in Vienna!