The South Asian nation of Bhutan is migrating its self-sovereign ID system to Ethereum from Polygon, permitting its almost 800,000 residents to confirm their identities and entry authorities providers.
The combination with Ethereum has been accomplished, whereas the migration of all resident credentials is anticipated to complete by the primary quarter of 2026, according to Ethereum Basis President Aya Miyaguchi, who joined Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on the launch ceremony with Bhutan’s prime minister, Tshering Tobgay, and crown prince, Jigme Namgyel Wangchuk.
“It’s deeply inspiring to see a nation decide to empowering its residents with self-sovereign id,” Miyaguchi posted to X on Monday, including that the Ethereum integration was a world-first.
“This milestone marks not solely a nationwide achievement however a world step towards a extra open and safe digital future for the long run.”
Integrating a blockchain-based answer right into a authorities’s nationwide ID system has lengthy been touted as a promising crypto use case, attributable to its immutability, transparency and privateness options, significantly when zero-knowledge proofs are applied.
Ethereum is Bhutan’s third blockchain nationwide ID answer
Bhutan beforehand ran its national ID system on Polygon from August 2024 and Hyperledger Indy earlier than that. Brazil and Vietnam are among the many few different international locations which have partially built-in blockchain-based self-sovereign id options so far.
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Miyaguchi famous that Bhutan’s Nationwide Digital Id and GovTech groups performed a vital position within the Ethereum integration, in addition to different contributors within the Bhutan crypto group.
Bhutan has been stacking Bitcoin
Bhutan — a rustic that measures nationwide progress by Gross Nationwide Happiness — has quietly change into a pacesetter in crypto adoption lately. It’s at the moment the fifth-largest Bitcoin-holding nation-state, having amassed its holdings by way of mining utilizing renewable vitality at its Himalayan hydropower dams.
It at the moment holds 11,286 Bitcoin value $1.31 billion, trailing solely the US, China, the UK, and Ukraine, BitBo’s Bitcoin Treasuries data reveals.
Bhutan may be exploring different crypto initiatives, having met with former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao in late September — although the small print of their discussions weren’t disclosed.
Pay in #BNB utilizing @Binance Pay in Bhutan🇧🇹, good and straightforward. 😏 pic.twitter.com/B5p3YolJjJ
— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) September 29, 2025
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