💡 Who this is for: Those working on digital trust, trade digitisation, verifiable credentials, registry-based assurance and digital identity infrastructure. Especially relevant for those considering how claims and credentials can be traced to authoritative sources across jurisdictions.
Definition: The UN Global Registry Information Directory (GRID) is a shared directory through which participating UN Member States can identify their authoritative registrars. For background, see our earlier article, Introducing the GRID: A Global Directory for Trust.
Why it’s important, now: A verifiable credential can prove that information has not been altered and was signed using a particular cryptographic key. And yet questions remain. Who controlled that key? Why should the issuer be trusted? GRID is designed to help people follow that trust chain back to a registrar identified by the relevant UN Member State.
To bring you a status update on the UN Global Registry Information Directory, we went directly to one of the people leading its development. For our Trust Architecture Education Series Webinar 15, Pyx Global CEO Zachary Zeus spoke with John Phillips, co-founder of Australian digital trust consultancy Sezoo and GRID co-lead, about how GRID is designed to work, the principles shaping it and what needs to happen next.
A Collaborative Directory of Authoritative Registrars
Registrars are the institutions responsible for registering organisations and other entities recognised under the laws of a particular jurisdiction. Examples include Companies House in the United Kingdom and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in Australia. They create and maintain the datasets that make up their registers.
Under the proposed UN Global Registry Information Directory (GRID) model, participating registrars would publish information about their registers. This could include which register is authoritative for a particular purpose, the authority it operates under, where the relevant law can be found and what types of registrations it issues.
GRID would use the limited, signed information that participating registrars make available about themselves and their registers to create a shared directory. This would help businesses, regulators and others involved in cross-border trade find the registrar recognised as authoritative by a UN Member State, especially when checking an organisation or registration in an unfamiliar jurisdiction.
The registrars would continue to hold and manage their data within their existing systems, and the contents of their registers would remain under their control.
Participation would be voluntary. Participating UN Member States and their registrars would agree to the data structures and signing requirements needed for GRID to check and publish their information. The GRID model is therefore both collaborative and decentralised.
Sovereignty Is a Design Principle
“The UN writes recommendations and countries decide whether to adopt them,” Phillips says. “Nation states decide whether they wish to follow.”
GRID has no authority to determine how UN Member States register things, what legislation they enact or whether their registrars charge for registration. Those are sovereign decisions.
“It’s up to them how they decide to run their business and run their laws,” Phillips says. “We don’t want to interfere. We wanted to find the lightest, simplest way.”
Connecting an Organisation to Its Registration
Phillips uses the example of a company stating that it is registered in Spain to illustrate how GRID could support a trust chain.
A buyer, regulator or other recipient of the information could consult GRID to identify the organisation registrar recognised by Spain, then check the company’s registration with that registrar. This provides a human-readable route for verifying the information.
To make the same trust chain automatically verifiable by machines, the GRID project recommends the use of an additional component: the Digital Identity Anchor, or DIA.
A registrar follows its usual process to undertake the checks required under its legal framework before registering an organisation. It then issues an identifier. In Australia, for example, this could be an Australian Business Number.
To receive a DIA, the organisation supplies a decentralised identifier, or DID, that it controls. Following the recommended DIA data structure and issuance process, the registrar verifies the organisation’s control of the DID and issues a signed Digital Identity Anchor linking it to the existing registration identifier. Phillips describes the DIA as a “little molecule that connects things together”.
Following the “Says Who?” Chain
A verifiable credential has a precise and limited function.
“With a verifiable credential, we can cryptographically prove that this thing has not been tampered with and was signed by a particular cryptographic key,” Phillips says.
“It means that, and precisely that, and no more than that.”
The next questions are: who controlled the signing key, and why should that source be recognised?
“The verifiable credential element is an essential building block, but it’s only quite a little atomic element,” Phillips says. “Everything else needs to connect together.”
As AI makes convincing false information easier to produce, even a network of cryptographically signed information could ultimately lead to a false source.
“Until you can get a trustworthy peak authority, you’re at a bit of a loss as to how you prove the integrity of the whole thing.”
For the UN/CEFACT GRID, that authority comes from the UN Member State structure.
Status: From Public Review to an Operational GRID
The GRID documentation is currently undergoing public review, with comments open until 21 September 2026. The project welcomes questions, suggestions for improvement and feedback on GRID’s proposed responsibilities. Following the review, the team will consider the comments received and finalise the documentation.
GRID could then be considered by UN/CEFACT as a potential operational system, subject to interest from UN Member States and agreement from the UN to help operate it.
Phillips encourages Trust Architects and others working in digital trust to examine the proposal and contribute: “Have a look and tell us what you think.”
Explore the GRID project and its public-review documentation
Discuss This Topic
Of course we have a GRID category on the Pyx Trust Architecture Community Forum. Head there to ask questions and discuss: forum.community.pyx.io/c/grid