Software that respects the people who use it.
Interop Alliance designs and builds systems on open standards, decentralized identity, and bring-your-own-everything architectures -- for teams that treat data sovereignty as a product feature, not a footnote.
What we take on, and how we work.
Architecture and standards review
Audits of identity, data, and interop layers against open specs -- W3C DIDs, VCs, Authentication, Authorization, ActivityPub, and the RFCs that matter to your stack.
Decentralized identity systems
Production implementations of self-sovereign identity, verifiable credentials, and key-management flows that hold up under real users and real regulation.
BYO-everything platforms
Products built so your customers can bring their own storage, identity, permissions, and compute -- without rebuilding the app around each variation.
Privacy-first product builds
Small, senior engagements that ship real code: from protocol design to web and mobile clients, with privacy baked into the seams, not bolted on.
User Experience Design
Flows for credential issuance, presentation, and consent that users can actually follow -- because trust breaks the moment the UI becomes a black box.
Brand Design
Visual identity built on the same principles as the software -- legible, honest, and not trying to hide anything in the fine print.
Five commitments we won't bend on.
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The user is the customer.
Not the product, not the data source, not the growth lever. If a design choice can't be explained plainly to the person using it, we don't ship it.
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Open standards.
We build on published specifications with interoperable implementations. If a standard doesn't exist yet, we contribute to one, publicly and in the open.
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Identity belongs to the person.
Decentralized identifiers, verifiable credentials, and user controlled wallets. The alternative is renting your users back to yourself from a third party.
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Bring your own everything.
Storage, identity provider, access control, compute. Software should adapt to where people already are.
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Data minimalism as default.
Collect less, retain shorter, encrypt at rest and in transit. The safest database is the one that was never written to.
We make the complex feel like it was always this simple.
About Our Team
Specialized expertise in the systems that are hardest to get right: identity, privacy, credentials, and the interfaces people actually trust.
Dmitri Zagidulin
Distributed systems engineer and authentication and credentials expert; Technical Architect for the DCC, contributing to core decentralization libraries, open standards, and conference organization.
James Chartrand
Thirty years of software development in higher-ed, designing and building systems for research data collection, analysis, and publication, with a focus on digital credentialing for the last five years.
Omar Salah
Full-stack developer building modern web applications with React.js, Next.js, Node.js, and TypeScript, with experience across both front-end and back-end development.
Janet Gonzales
Specializing in UX strategy for verifiable credentials and AI, Janet brings clarity to complex systems — designing user-first experiences that make hard technical problems feel intuitive.
“Interoperability is a promise you make to your users -- that they can leave, take their things, and still be themselves.”
Have a system worth building carefully?
We take on a small number of engagements each year. If you're a founder, CTO, or engineering lead working on something where privacy, identity, or interop aren't negotiable -- we'd like to hear from you.
A first conversation is an hour, unpaid, and no pitch deck required.