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Witnesses urge Wyoming to adopt state-endorsed digital identifiers and self-sovereign IDs
Summary
Public commenters told the select committee that a Wyoming-backed digital identifier and "enclave" framework could let anonymous online businesses access banking, reduce deed and election fraud, and provide auditable chains of trust while preserving personal data ownership.
Dave Roland proposed a Wyoming state-endorsed digital identity linkage program during public comment to give anonymous or privacy-focused online businesses a verifiable chain of trust for banking and legal purposes. "What I am proposing is the creation of a Wyoming state endorsed digital identity linkage program," Roland told the Select Committee on blockchain topics.
Roland said the design would let an anonymous limited liability company store a hashed identifier and a state-signed credential that banks could use to perform KYC without the state holding individualspersonal data. He described a verifier model similar to UtahSETI that relies on cryptographic proofs so "the state doesn't actually hold any data of the person," Roland said.
Bridal Maher, testifying online, told the committee his "Enclave Act" converges with Roland's proposal and extends it to AI agents and series-enclave structures. Maher described a Wyoming Digital Identifier Act that would create a pointer-based nexus to Wyoming and permit different kinds of proofs (simple yes/no ZK queries, cryptographically signed public attestations, and encrypted private disclosures) so that identifiers can point to either on-chain addresses or off-chain documents.
Committee members questioned technical privacy risks, including whether hashed identifiers could be reversed with rainbow-table attacks. Roland acknowledged the risk and described using strong 512-bit hashing and encrypted containers, but cautioned that "nothing is 100% secure." Maher urged planning for post-quantum cryptography and said NISTalgorithms and federal PQS timelines should inform statute.
Why it matters: Committee members said a state-backed signing and registry system could unlock banking access for legitimate privacy-focused businesses, protect real-estate transfers and voter residency attestations, and provide clearer legal nexus for tokenized assets. Several members asked staff to fold identity concepts into future bills; the committee agreed to continue refining statutory language and to consider whether some signing authority (the secretary of state's office) should be specified in law.
The committee did not vote on an identity bill; members asked staff and the working group to keep developing the proposals and to consider narrower versus broader statutory approaches.
