Sphereon
insight
IDK, EDK, VDX: build, run, operate and govern
Sphereon’s stack is structured as a progression: open-source building blocks for developers, production-grade infrastructure for enterprises, and an operational trust platform for organisations governing verifiable data exchange across parties, channels, and workflows. Each tier addresses a distinct set of requirements. All three share the same semantic foundation.
This progression is deliberate. IDK lets teams build without vendor lock-in. EDK lets enterprises run at scale without building infrastructure from scratch. VDX lets organisations govern trust flows across their ecosystem without managing every integration separately.
The three tiers can be used independently or as a combined stack. The entry point depends on where the organisation is: evaluating standards, deploying in production, or governing trust exchange across an ecosystem.
IDK: build.
Sphereon’s open-source identity development kit. Protocol-level building blocks for verifiable credential issuance, presentation, and verification. Full control of the stack, no vendor lock-in, built on open standards.
EDK: run.
Production-grade enterprise infrastructure: multi-tenancy, semantic attribute modeling, runtime policy enforcement, structured audit, and commercial support. No multi-year build required.
VDX: operate and govern.
The governance layer for trust exchange across parties: trust registries, cross-party policy alignment, credential flow orchestration, and runtime governance across organisations and agents.
How the three fit together.
The three tiers are not alternatives. They address different layers of the same infrastructure requirement. A team evaluating verifiable credential standards starts with IDK. An enterprise deploying issuer and verifier capabilities in production uses EDK. An organisation governing trust flows across a supplier network or partner ecosystem operates VDX on top.
Many organisations enter at the EDK layer and adopt VDX as their trust ecosystem grows. Some start with IDK before committing to a production deployment. The progression is designed to support that path without requiring a replatform at each step.
Build. Run. Operate. Govern.
Talk to Sphereon about which tier fits your current requirements and how the stack grows with your organisation.