UPID — Universal Personal Identity: A conceptual framework for biometrically anchored, federated personhood without central data storage

This whitepaper sets out a conceptual framework for a global personhoodsystem (UPID — Universal Personal Identity) that avoids the centralstructural weaknesses of the approaches discussed to date — fromWorldcoin through the European Digital Identity Wallet to social-graphprocedures. The framework rests on three choices: a reduction of the problem fieldto two viable core problems (uniqueness at enrolment and continuity onreturn); a strict separation between an attribute-free personhood layerand an application-specific application layer; and a resolution of thetrilemma global · deduplicated · without central data storage through afederated existential query. From these choices, thirteen core requirements (A1–A13) are derived thatdescribe the framework conclusively. Six explicit non-requirements keepquestions out of the core that could not be answered at system levelwithout violating fundamental rights. A two-tier application model with tiered attributes enables both purepersonhood applications and name-bound applications, including use as afully-fledged passport system under ICAO 9303. Concrete cryptographic procedures and protocol details are deliberatelyoutside this document and are the subject of separate work. This textserves to fix authorship of the framework described as of the date ofits publication. In case of interpretive doubt, the German original v1.0is authoritative.