Decentralized Identifiers and Wallets Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
Decentralized identifier and digital identity wallet patents: who is filing, and what they claim
Filing is concentrated but not locked up. the top 5 assignees account for 39.6% of all 192 records in scope, and the top 10 for 54.7% — leaving a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants. Annual filings rose from 9 in 2017 to a peak of 41 in 2025, the highest year on record. But the reliable comparison window — 2021 to 2024, both largely complete — shows filings falling from 24 to 18, a -25% change. Treat 2025 and 2026 as still filling in rather than as a rebound, since publication lag means recent years always look thinner than they will eventually be.
- 1VISA INTERNATIONAL SERVICE ASSOCIATION29
- 2NOK NOK LABS INC16
- 3VANNADIUM INC13
- 4QUALCOMM INC9
- 5MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC9
See the full decentralized identifiers and wallets analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about this landscape
Who holds the most patents on decentralized identifiers and digital identity wallets?
One assignee leads with 29 of the 192 records in this dataset, well ahead of the fifth-ranked filer at 9 and the tenth-ranked filer at 4. The top 5 assignees combined account for 39.6% of all records, and the top 10 for 54.7%, so leadership is concentrated but far from exclusive. The remaining 90 or so ranked assignees make up a long tail of entrants with only a handful of filings each, which means new filers are still entering the space regularly.
Is patent filing in this field growing or slowing down?
Both, depending on the window you look at. Filings grew from 9 in 2017 to a peak of 41 in 2025, but the most recent fully comparable period, 2021 to 2024, actually shows a -25% decline from 24 to 18 filings. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete, so it is premature to call the 2025 peak a sustained rebound rather than a data artefact of that lag.
What technology areas dominate decentralized identifier patent claims?
Digital information transmission, classified under H04L, appears in 78.1% of the 192 records, making it by far the largest technical category. Electric digital data processing (G06F) and business/commerce data processing (G06Q) follow at 43.8% and 28.6% respectively. AI-assisted classification (G06N), image-based recognition (G06V) and healthcare informatics (G16H) each appear in 1.6% or less of records, indicating these adjacent techniques are lightly claimed relative to core wallet and transmission mechanisms.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Decentralized Identifiers and Wallets covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.