Igniting Innovation in Digital Organizational Identity: The vLEI Hackathon Global Series Begins
From decentralized finance to supply chain resilience and ESG transparency, the vLEI provides what digital transformation has long needed – a secure, portable, and verifiable credential that proves who an organization is and who acts on its behalf. In this blog, Alexandre Kech, CEO at GLEIF, explores how the Global vLEI Hackathon Series aims to spark innovation, foster cross-industry collaboration, and demonstrate the real-world potential of verifiable organizational identity.
Author: Alexandre Kech
Date: 2025-07-24
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In a global economy shaped by accelerating digitalization, fragmented trust, and complex regulation, organizations face a pressing challenge: how to prove who they are – securely, instantly, and across borders. As digital ecosystems evolve across finance, supply chains, and industry platforms, the need for verifiable, interoperable organizational identity has never been greater.
The verifiable Legal Entity Identifier (vLEI) promises to meet this challenge. By enabling organizations, their authorized representatives, but also, where relevant, their clients to identify themselves with cryptographic certainty using a universally recognized credential, the vLEI lays the foundation for trusted interactions, automated compliance, and scalable digital transformation.
At the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), we believe that the vLEI truly marks the future of digital trust at the organizational level. That is why we are proud to launch the Global vLEI Hackathon Series – our call for technology innovators everywhere to start building this future together.
Shaping Real-World Solutions, Together
The vLEI Hackathon goes far beyond simply building technical prototypes. It’s about unlocking the full potential of the vLEI as a cornerstone of secure, scalable, and interoperable digital economies. This can only be achieved by mobilizing and challenging the global innovation community to test, validate, and accelerate the adoption of verifiable organizational identity in real-world contexts.
To realize this ambition, GLEIF invites developers, entrepreneurs, policy stakeholders, and innovators worldwide to explore three key thematic areas where trusted identity is the missing piece in digital transformation – and where the vLEI can deliver immediate value. These are:
Digital Assets & Financial Infrastructure – How can the vLEI enable compliant, cross-chain identity in on-chain finance?
Industry 4.0: Manufacturing, Commerce & Finance – What role can the vLEI play in Know Your Business (KYB) processes, IoT identity, and ESG transparency?
Trade, Supply Chain Resilience, and SME Finance – How can the vLEI enhance traceability, digitization of trade documents, and SME onboarding?
Participants will work through the APIX Platform, and finalists will be invited to showcase their solutions at three global stages, with each event spotlighting the ingenuity of our ecosystem while building new bridges across geographies, sectors, and communities:
SmartCon by Chainlink – New York (3 November)
Hong Kong Fintech Week – (7 November)
GLEIF Digital Org ID Forum – Frankfurt (2 December)
Strengthening the Global Ecosystem for Organizational ID
Importantly, the vLEI Hackathon forms part of GLEIF’s broader strategic framework to accelerate the adoption of digital organizational identity.
We established the vLEI Technical Advisory Board in July 2024 – a global, cross-industry body of subject matter experts providing guidance and governance to support the ongoing development of the vLEI stakeholder ecosystem. Their insight will help ensure the vLEI remains robust, scalable, and aligned with the evolving needs of diverse industry participants as adoption continues to build.
And in May 2025, we launched the GLEIF Partner Program to create a vibrant network of collaborators who are building, integrating, and deploying vLEI-enabled solutions across sectors.
Together, these initiatives lay the groundwork for an open and trustworthy digital economy, demonstrating the growing momentum behind the global digital identity movement. This is reflected in the steadfast support for the vLEI Hackathon by leading organizations from across technology, finance, academia, and digital infrastructure, including Affinidi, Apix, Cardano Foundation, Chainlink, EPA Asia, Esatus, the Finternet Lab, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, fts.money, GFTN Europe, Giesecke+Devrient, ICC Digital Standards Initiative, Key State Capital, Swift, Hong Kong PKI Forum, Vayana, Veriable.Trade and more. Additionally, the vLEI Hackathon will contribute to the further development of the ecosystem supported by Qualified vLEI Issuers (QVIs), including Certizen Technology, China Financial Certification Authority (CFCA), Finema, Global vLEI, Provenant, and TradeGo, which will also play central roles.
Why This Matters. Now.
Growing ecosystem momentum further reinforces our view that the vLEI represents a transformative leap forward in how organizational identity is verified and used. By creating a bridge between legal, human, and machine-readable trust, it can eliminate reliance on intermediaries, paper-based credentials, or fragile integrations, promoting transparency and trust across borders, infrastructures, and ecosystems.
However, the vLEI protocol alone is insufficient. It must be embedded, tested, and refined within real-world applications. That is precisely what this hackathon invites the world to do. Whether you’re a developer, designer, policy thinker, or entrepreneur, the time is now to help define the digital trust layer of tomorrow’s economy. Let’s build this future – secure, interoperable, and inclusive – together.
Registration is now open via the APIX Platform and runs until 29 August 2025. Finalists will be shortlisted on 7 September.
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Alexandre Kech is the CEO of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF).
Prior to joining GLEIF, Alexandre Kech was Head of Digital Securities at the SIX Digital Exchange. As a member of the Executive Board, Alex had full executive responsibility for the Digital Securities business vertical, including sales and relationship management, product development, business design, and ecosystem expansion.
Over the past 25 years, Alex has constructed a unique career combining finance at BNY Mellon, payments/securities infrastructure and standards at SWIFT, and blockchain and digital assets at Onchain Custodian (ONC) and, most recently, Citi Ventures. As co-founder and CEO of ONC, Alex led the Singapore and Shanghai-based team that built custody and prime brokerage services for crypto and other digital assets from scratch. As Blockchain & Digital Asset director at Citi Ventures, he built a team to engage the European ecosystem on emerging use cases for blockchain technologies and digital assets.
Alex is also involved in industry and standardization initiatives. As the convenor of the ISO TC 68 / SC8 / WG3, which produced the ISO 24165 Digital Token Identifier (DTI), he is a member of the DTI Foundation Product Advisory Committee. He also recently served as co-chair of the Global Digital Finance (gdf.io) custody working group.
Alex earned a bachelor’s degree in translation and an Executive MBA from the Quantic School of Business and Technology while building Onchain Custodian, putting theory into practice in real-time.
