How is FIDES Organized?

FIDES is an open, evolving initiative — not a centralized project or foundation.At its core, FIDES is a community of people and organizations who share a commitment to practical, open collaboration around digital trust and interoperability.

To support this community, a number of shared resources and coordination activities are needed — from maintaining open tools and infrastructure to facilitating use case development and cross-sector alignment.

These efforts are currently facilitated by FIDES Labs BV — a private company founded by the original initiators of the FIDES Community, to help the ecosystem grow and evolve in a neutral, sustainable way.

FIDES Labs:

– acts as a neutral facilitator and infrastructure steward;
– supports the community through shared coordination, tooling, and governance;
– is transparent and open to collaboration with public and private partners globally.
– does not offer a wallet product or compete with technology providers;

FIDES Labs was founded by Harmen van der Kooij and Victor van der Hulst.As long-time contributors to the digital identity and interoperability space, they established FIDES Labs in 2025 to ensure the FIDES Community could continue to evolve and grow independently.

FIDES Labs does not hold exclusive rights to coordinate or support the community. Any organization is welcome to contribute to the shared infrastructure, initiate new tracks, or offer facilitation and tooling in line with the community’s values.

The only activities currently reserved for FIDES Labs are the day-to-day maintenance of the fides.community website and the coordination of shared tools — to ensure operational continuity and coherence. Everything else is open to collaborative input, reuse, or new initiatives by others.

In the future, we envision FIDES as a globally accessible public-good infrastructure:not bound to a single organization, vendor, or government — but strengthened by shared ownership and diverse participation.