OpenHuerta

Inspiration

In the UK, there’s a long-standing resistance to national ID cards, largely because people don’t trust the government to safely store and control their personal data. Past attempts to introduce centralized identity systems have faced strong pushback over concerns about surveillance, data misuse, and security breaches.

That tension highlights a deeper issue: people need ways to prove who they are, but don’t want to give up control of their identity to a central authority.

We realized this isn’t just a UK problem. Around the world, identity systems rely on centralized databases that are vulnerable to hacks, leaks, and misuse.

So. What if identity verification didn’t require a server at all — only the people involved?

That question led us to a peer-to-peer identity model built on trust between devices, not trust in institutions.

We were also inspired by the Pears ecosystem and its vision of user-owned, peer-to-peer web infrastructure — making it a natural foundation for a decentralized identity system.

What it does

OpenHuerta is a serverless, peer-to-peer identity verification system that allows users to prove their identity without storing sensitive data in any central database.

It works in two stages:

Identity creation (one-time setup)
A user generates a digital identity locally on their device
Their identity is cryptographically signed and stored only on their device
A QR code is generated representing a secure session / identity link
Peer-to-peer verification
A verifier (e.g. bartender, event staff, or web app) scans the QR code
A direct peer-to-peer connection is established between devices
Identity data is exchanged and verified in real time using cryptographic signatures
No personal data is stored on servers — it exists only during the session

This means:

No central identity database
No long-term data retention
No third-party dependency for verification
Identity proof happens directly between peers

How we built it

We built OpenHuerta as a React Native (Expo) mobile application combined with a peer-to-peer runtime layer.

Key technologies:

Expo + React Native for the mobile UI (Android verification app)
Bare Kit (react-native-bare-kit) to run a low-level peer-to-peer runtime inside the app
Pears / Hypercore-inspired P2P architecture for decentralized communication
QR code generation (react-native-qrcode-svg) to bootstrap sessions between devices
NaCl / cryptographic libraries (tweetnacl, sodium-javascript) for key generation and signature verification
AsyncStorage for local identity persistence (no server storage)

Architecture:

The mobile app acts as both identity wallet + verifier
A peer-to-peer “session topic” is shared via QR code
Devices join a swarm-like connection over P2P transport
A lightweight worklet runtime handles identity exchange and verification logic locally

We also designed the system to align with Pears’ peer-to-peer web vision, using decentralized networking principles instead of traditional client-server architecture.