The Early Adopters programme is your incubator to help you and your partners imagine, build and launch their EBSI pilot project(s). Together, we reimagine mobility in Europe. We help citizens study, work and grow all over Europe.Early Adopters Programme
What is the Early Adopters programme?
Since 2018, the EBP and the EC develop and deploy EBSI through a network of distributed nodes across Europe to support cross-border applications across multiple domains.
In 2020, EBSI launched the Early Adopters programme: an incubator to help Early Adopters and their partners imagine, build and launch their EBSI pilot projects.
Through the Early Adopters programme, EBSI wants to encourage actors from all across Europe tap into the potential of the EBSI infrastructure. The EBP has selected use cases in different domains to pilot through the programme, such as Social Security, Diploma, Self-Sovereign identify, Document Traceability, etc.
Use cases are developed following a collaborative lifecycle:
- Identification and selection
- Development
- Piloting
- Deployment in production
Once a project is selected to join the programme, each project's private and public sector partners are given early access to a test environment of EBSI. They are given the chance to further develop and test their pilot project so that a specific business or government use case can be addressed.
Each project will contribute to the improvement of EBSI's services and ensure it meets the needs of European businesses and public administrations, within and across their national borders.
What's in it for you?
Pilot and test use cases in real-life settings and deliver the first cross-border services using blockchain.Pilot
Find synergies and work in collaboration with other organisations (private and public).Collaborate
Get access to EBSI services, tools and support and gain visibility at European level. Get support
Beginning of 2021, the “Early Adopters”, 21 projects from 18 European countries participated in the first pilot programme of EBSI. Each project's private and public sector partners were given early access to the pre-production environment of EBSI and were invited to develop their own pilot projects to address specific business or governmental use cases involving the exchange of verifiable credentials in the education domain. In July 2021, 2 European universities alliances and 11 universities from 11 countries joined their forces to create the so-called “multi-University pilot” during which they identified, designed and delivered 6 cross-border scenarios, together.The first successful story

The EBSI Early Adopters have been challenged to test their different pilots in real-life settings. Key stakeholders had to be identified to test the interoperability of their solutions in the ecosystem to allow for the exchange of verifiable credentials by students and universities: trusted accreditation organisations, trusted issuers, holders of credentials, wallet providers and other partners.The importance of the ecosystem
The final step of the Early Adopters programme was a showcase of the outcomes in the demo day organised in June 2022.
They first explored the EBSI specifications and made sure their pilot scope was clear. They used the Verifiable Credentials Lifecycle to understand how Verifiable Credentials work according to W3C and EBSI standards. They designed the cross-border pilot scenario(s) and the integration plan at a Design Workshop. They integrated their solutions in pre-production, basing themselves on the Verifiable Credentials Playbook and using wallets conformant with EBSI, they implemented the Verifiable Credentials according to W3C and EBSI standard specifications. A collaborative path

Requirements to join the Early Adopters programme
Follow the below steps and register to join the Early Adopters Programme.
- Choose a domain
Pilot and test use cases in real-life settings and deliver the first cross-border services using blockchain.
By successfully piloting “self-sovereign identity” and the “diploma” use cases, EBSI is well advanced in the implementation of various types of Verifiable Credentials. The Early Adopters programme is growing and EBSI is opening different tracks for you to pilot:
Education domain
Piloting a new credential in the education domain.
Social security domain
Piloting a new credential in the social domain.
Other domain
Proposing a new use case in a specific domain where verifiable credentials are relevant
- Define your role
You can participate in the Early Adopters Programme in different roles. Please specify as which role you would like to participate.
As an issuer
You can become an issuer of the proposed educational credentials or implement other credential to enrich the service.
As a verifier
You can join and adopt such solution in the context of your recruitment process and significantly reduce your verification costs.
As a wallet provider
You can turn your wallet into an EBSI conformant wallet and build a pan-European wallet ecosystem.
As a TAO
You can become a trusted accreditation organisation and / or issuer of verifiable IDs.
As a holder
You can join the group of beta users..
- Ready to register?
Start your registration process to join the Early Adopters program by filling out the form
...or do you need more information before registering?
Explore the What is EBSI page and learn more about EBSI’s network, infrastructure and capabilities.
Explore the Success stories and get inspired by them.
Explore the specifications in details by consulting the Developers hub.
EBSI FAQ
Decentralised identifiers (DIDs) are a new type of identifier that enables verifiable, decentralised digital identity. A DID refers to any subject (e.g., a person, organization, thing, data model, abstract entity, etc.) as determined by the controller of the DID. The design enables the controller of a DID to prove control over it without requiring permission from any other party. DIDs are URIs that associate a DID subject with a DID document allowing trustable interactions associated with that subject. They are based on the Self-sovereign identity paradigm.
EBSI is currently restricted to public administrations and EBP endorsed partners. You can contact your national EBP representative for more information on how to get involved in your national initiatives (if applicable).
The Early Adopters programme is currently closed, registrations are foreseen to reopen soon. You can already subscribe to our waiting list here and be informed once the programme is accepting new applications.