The Cardano Foundation announced on Oct. 8 that it has spun out Veridian as an independent digital identity company after three years of internal development. The new commercial business will be led by CEO Thomas A. Mayfield and will provide tools for governments, organizations and individuals to verify identity and authority in digital interactions without relying on a central identity database.
As part of the separation, Veridian’s shares have been issued as ledger-based securities under Switzerland’s DLT Act. The Foundation describes them as the first asset deployed on Cardano using the new CIP-0113 programmable token standard, which went live on Cardano’s mainnet on Oct. 7. The standard enables issuers to attach identity checks, transfer restrictions and approved-address controls, and requires a successful script check before ownership can change. The framework uses existing Cardano capabilities and did not require a hard fork, and it does not automatically apply those controls to ADA or ordinary native tokens.
Veridian plans to seek strategic partners and investors in 2027 to support expansion, including its U.S. government business, European enterprise operations, and Asia-Pacific issuer network. In the United States, the company is focused on Utah’s State-Endorsed Digital Identity legislation, SB 275, which made Utah the first U.S. state to pass such privacy-preserving identity legislation in 2026. Veridian says it has mapped all 142 requirements in Utah’s SEDI implementation guide, while more than ten other states are observing the model. The Foundation also cited Javelin Strategy & Research data estimating identity fraud cost U.S. consumers $27.3 billion in 2025.
Veridian’s identity wallet is live on iOS and Android and uses the KERI and ACDC open identity standards. Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard is Veridian’s chair, and the Foundation’s chief legal officer Nicolas Jacquemart joined the board. The platform is already used by Masumi, the Cardano-based AI agent payment and identity network developed by Serviceplan Group and NMKR, to verify AI agents before payments.
Mayfield stated: “Veridian gives every person, organisation and agent a credential that can be verified instantly and revoked just as fast, with no central database to compromise.”
