What
What is the First Person Network?
The First Person Network is a trust network. It is formed by people connecting with other people they personally know and trust—person to person—and by trust communities who join the First Person Network to give their members the benefits of First Person connections.
Unlike centralized social networks, where all the connections are in one giant database, the First Person Network is decentralized. Each member—each individual person and each trust community—keeps their own set of connections. So the First Person Network is like the Internet: it is not owned or operated by any single company or government, but by all of us. Like the Internet, it serves all of us as a digital public utility.
See Part Seven of the First Person Project White Paper.
What is a trust community?
A trust community is any set of individuals collaborating in any organizational form—from a small group to a nation state. Every corporation, partnership, nonprofit, association, and government is a trust community. So are open source projects, schools, churches, homeowner associations, and any other social structure where the members need to establish trust in one another.
In the First Person Network, a trust community is able to attest to the legitimacy of its members by issuing them one or more types of First Person credentials.
What are First Person credentials?
As we move into a world of digital wallets, such as those offered by Apple, Google, Samsung, and other modern smartphone vendors, those wallets contain digital credentials. A common example is a mobile driver’s license (mDL), which is now being issued by some governments including Australia and several U.S. states.
International standards bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have established open standards for how new types of digital credentials can be created. Examples include employment IDs, health insurance cards, loyalty cards, educational records, and so on.
First Person credentials are a new family of digital credentials designed to establish privacy-preserving trust relationships. First Person credentials give people a simple standard way to prove they are a real unique human being without having to share any other personal data. (In industry terms, this is called proof of personhood or proof of humanity).
See Part Five of the First Person Project White Paper.
What is the First Person Network Cooperative?
The First Person Network Cooperative (FPNC) is a digital cooperative being established for the exclusive purpose of developing, growing, and maintaining the First Person Network as a digital public utility.
Any individual or trust community who joins the First Person Network is qualified to join the FPNC. The FPNC serves as the governing body for the First Person Network, establishing the policies under which members agree to interoperate. The FPNC also offers services to members, including sovereign cloud services, private message routing, digital wallet backup/recovery, and First Person AI agents.
See Part Nine of the First Person Project White Paper.
What are sovereign cloud services?
While it is technically possible for the First Person Network to operate entirely on edge devices—meaning the smartphones, laptops, desktops, and other computing devices we use as individuals—it would be very hard to use. It is much more convenient if the network can also use cloud services that enable members to easily and privately exchange messages and data.
However, third-party cloud services raise the prospect of surveillance, censorship, advertising, third-party terms of service, and other impediments to the goals of the First Person Network.
The alternative is for these cloud services to be offered cooperatively by the FPNC. This would ensure that these cloud services operated in accordance with the First Person Network Governance Framework and are made available to FPNC members at the lowest cost.
See Part Nine of the First Person Project White Paper.
What are First Person AI agents?
AI agents are one of the most anticipated developments in the new age of generative AI. Personal AI agents are AI agents that act on behalf of individuals. They answer questions and perform tasks such as doing research, booking reservations, scheduling/rescheduling appointments, or filling out forms.
What are the trust issues with personal AI agents?
The biggest question regarding personal AI agents is: “Who are they working for?” In other words, in whose interest are they acting? What personal data are they sharing with whom? Who gets to see the results of their work?
If your personal AI agent is hosted by a third-party vendor, those questions will always be very hard to answer because the vendor always has their own profit motive. A primary reason for establishing the First Person Network Cooperative is offer personal AI agent services to co-op members. This eliminates any conflict: you can be 100% confident your personal AI agent is always acting exclusively in your interest and that your personal data will always be private and protected.
See Part Eight of the First Person Project White Paper.
Why has trust become so eroded on the Internet?
Support for digital trust was not built into the original architecture of the Internet. It began as a relatively small community of universities and government agencies. The founders never anticipated it would grow to become the digital backbone of society.
See Part One of the First Person Project White Paper.
Why is AI making the trust issues worse?
Generative AI has an astonishing capability to impersonate humans. In fact it has become better at solving CAPTCHAs and other “robot tests” than humans are. This is leading to an explosion in new cybersecurity scams.
See Part One of the First Person Project White Paper.
Why has proof of personhood become so important?
Many online sites and services are already fighting tooth-and-nail to block bots so they can devote their resources to serving humans. If gen AI can defeat these measures, it could turn the Internet into a giant soup of AI slop.
See Part Four of the First Person Project White Paper.
Why are the concerns with using a global biometric database?
Biometrics, such as fingerprints, facial scans, and iris scans, are the most sensitive of all personal data. They are irreplaceable and non-revokable. And they can only be used to prove a person is globally unique by building a global database of everyone’s biometrics. Even if that were possible, it raises so many security, privacy, and data control issues that it would be a nightmare.
See Part Four of the First Person Project White Paper.
Why does a decentralized trust graph hold so much promise?
A decentralized trust graph is a new approach to proof of personhood. It uses verifiable digital credentials stored in each person’s own digital wallet, just like physical credentials are stored in our personal physical wallets today. There is no centralized database of all these credentials—they come from many different issuers, each of whom governs their own system for determining if a person is real and unique.
See Part Four and Part Five of the First Person Project White Paper.
Why will issuers issue personhood credentials (PHCs)?
Issuers who want the members of their ecosystem (nation, company, school, community, etc.) to have stronger digital trust relationships will be motivated to issue PHCs. It is an even easier decision if the issuer is already issuing a credential (.e.g., government ID, employee ID, student ID, membership card) to each unique member.
Why will people exchange verifiable relationship credentials (VRCs) with each other?
This is easy: for the same reasons we exchange business cards, swap phone numbers, or connect on social networks or chat apps today. VRCs will simply become the most convenient and useful way to form and maintain ongoing personal relationships. And since there is no intermediary, a VRC connection can last as long as both parties want to keep it.
See Part Five of the First Person Project White Paper.
Why will people want First Person AI agents?
Generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT have already become the fastest growing new app in history. And this is before they even start carrying out complete tasks for us, such as booking a hotel or buying a new appliance.
Once personal AI agents are able to save us significant time and energy in our daily lives, they will be in very high demand. And the more we want them to do for us, the more of our personal data and history they will need access to: financial records, medical records, school records, family records, etc.
When this happens, concerns about privacy and surveillance will peak, and individuals will demand personal AI agents from sources who have a fiduciary duty to represent your interests. That’s the job of a First Person AI agent.
See Part Eight of the First Person Project White Paper.
Why create a new digital cooperative to support the First Person Network?
The short answer is trust. For individuals to be confident that First Person infrastructure is governed in their best interests, is NOT surveilling them, is protecting their privacy, and will not be subject to corporate capture, a good solution is for those individuals to own that infrastructure together as members of a cooperative. This holds even more true for First Person AI agents, where the agent provider — and the providers of the large language models (LLMs) on which it is trained—should have a fiduciary duty to always represent the person’s best interests.
How can the First Person Network function without a centralized database?
The First Person Network does not need a centralized database because the connections between members are captured as verifiable digital credentials stored in their own digital wallets. This enables each member to produce proofs of their own verifiable trust relationships.
How can digital credentials build a decentralized trust graph?
The First Person Network is based on two specific types of digital credentials: personhood credentials (PHCs) and verifiable relationship credentials (VRCs), each of which provides cryptographic proof of a real-world trust relationship.
How do personhood credentials (PHCs) work?
A PHC is a credential asserting that the holder is a real person who is unique in the ecosystem of the PHC issuer. Many issuers of existing credentials, such as government IDs, employee IDs, student IDs, and professional societies, already perform this function and thus are natural candidates to issue PHCs.
For more details, see Personhood Credentials in Part Five of the First Person Project White Paper.
How do verifiable relationship credentials (VRCs) work?
VRCs are issued peer-to-peer directly between individuals who know each other. The standard ceremony uses a QR code to form a new First Person connection—the same way QR codes can be used to connect on LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Signal , WeChat, etc. The difference is that a First Person connection has no intermediary. It is independent of any network and works directly wallet-to-wallet, forming a relationship that can last for the lifetimes of both parties.
For more details, see Verifiable Relationship Credentials in Part Five of the First Person Project White Paper.
How does a First Person proof work?
Once a First Person credential holder has one or more PHCs or VRCs in their wallet, the holder’s wallet can produce a zero-knowledge proof of the existence of these credentials to prove they are a real unique person without having to share any details about those specific trust relationships.
For more details, see Zero-Knowledge Proofs in Part Five of the First Person Project White Paper.
How is a First Person proof privacy-preserving?
The secret to how the First Person Network preserves privacy is the use of zero-knowledge cryptography. A First Person credential holder can create a proof about the number of trust relationships they have (PHCs or VRCs) without revealing who those specific trust relationships are with. The counterparty requesting the proof can verify its cryptographic validity but not learn anything more than the holder is a unique human with a certain threshold of trust relationships.
For more details, see Zero-Knowledge Proofs in Part Five of the First Person Project White Paper.
When did the First Person Project start?
Although the technical building blocks have been under development for over a decade, the First Person Project came together as a multi-stakeholder collaboration when the Personhood Credentials paper was released in August 2024. Members of the Trust Over IP (ToIP) project at LF Decentralized Trust realized that with the ToIP stack and personhood credentials, they could build an Internet-scale privacy-preserving proof of personhood solution.
The project accelerated when it was introduced at the Linux Foundation Member Summit in March 2025 as a solution to protect the LF open source supply chain.
When was the first announcement?
The first paper about First Person credentials, called The Special Network Effects of Ayra Network Credentials, was published at the launch of the Ayra Association at Davos in January 2025. The First Person Network website was launched and several sessions about the First Person Project were held at the Global Digital Collaboration in Geneva in July 2025.
When did the Linux Foundation decide to implement First Person credentials?
Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin announced the First Person Project workshop at the LF Member Summit in March 2025.
See Part Six of the First Person Project White Paper for the complete case study.
When will the Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group launch?
Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust announced the launch of the Decentralized Trust Graph Working Group (DTGWG) on 24 September 2025. It will be jointly hosted by Trust Over IP (ToIP) and Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF).
When will the First Person Network Cooperative be formed?
The founders of the First Person Project are currently working to develop the legal architecture and raise the funding necessary to launch the First Person Network Cooperative. The goal is to form the cooperative before the end of 2025.
Who started the First Person Project?
The First Person Project emerged from several related efforts, some of which go back over a decade. Those efforts came together into a multi-stakeholder collaboration when the Personhood Credentials paper was released in August 2024 and members of the Trust Over IP (ToIP) project at LF Decentralized Trust realized that with the ToIP stack and personhood credentials, they could build an Internet-scale decentralized trust graph.
See the Acknowledgements page of the First Person Project White Paper for a list of key contributors to the First Person Project. See Part Two for the history (especially the Internet Identity Workshop section), Part Three for more about the ToIP stack, Part Four about proof of personhood, and Part Five about the decentralized trust graph.
Who are the collaborating organizations?
Besides ToIP and its parent organization, LF Decentralized Trust, the other four organizations contributing to the early development of the First Person Project are Ayra Association (who authored the first white paper on First Person credentials), Customer Commons (who provided the seed funding), the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF).
Who will be the first members of the First Person Network?
The FPN has two classes of members: natural persons and trust communities. A small number of trust communities are needed to serve as the initial issuers of personhood credentials (PHCs). Once this happens, the network will start to grow by invitation as described in Part Seven of the First Person Project White Paper.
The Linux Foundation, other open source projects, and event communities such as Internet Identity Workshop are examples of the first trust communities that will begin issuing PHCs.
See Part Six and Part Ten of the First Person Project White Paper.
Who will provide the funding needed to establish First Person infrastructure?
First Person infrastructure requires investment from both commercial and nonprofit stakeholders. The former will use conventional investment pathways. On the nonprofit side, the development of the First Person Network Cooperative can be accomplished via a combination of membership fees and grants from commercial and philanthropic organizations.
See the description of the First Person Fund in Part NIne of the First Person Project White Paper.