OpenPGP ID, in a nutshell

OpenPGP ID is a digital identity that is:

• universal — usable anywhere OpenPGP is accepted (email signatures, SSH authentication, package signatures, Git certificates, …);
• sovereign — your private keys are yours, on a physical key (YubiKey / NitroKey) you hold in your hand;
• decentralised — no central authority, no third-party identity provider, no cloud vault to trust ;
• long-lived — your u4 or u5 identifier is stable for life; the certificates that back it can be rotated (post-quantum migration, etc.) without changing who you are.

Since January 2026 , OpenPGP ID is in production, shipped in the Djibian GNU/Linux operating system.

What is a sovereign digital identity good for?

In practice, your OpenPGP ID lets you:

• Authenticate without passwords on online services — including on any remote Djibian machine , without ever placing a private key on it.
• Sign your documents, emails, commits, contracts — non-repudiable proof of origin.
• Encrypt your exchanges and personal data, i.e. keep them private.
• Certify the people close to you and weave your web of trust .
• Stop being subjected to identity theft, informational pollution , or generative-AI misuse.

And more broadly, a step toward abolishing certain privileges , and gaining more freedom, equality, fraternity. ✊🕊️💕

Giving birth to your OpenPGP ID

On a Djibian system, the Djibian Onboarding graphical frontend (developed by Sébastien Picardeau ) guides the creation of an OpenPGP identity in about a dozen clicks:

1. Launch Djibian Onboarding (menu Applications → Accessories).
2. Choose « Configure your OpenPGP security key ».
3. Insert your YubiKey or NitroKey — it is detected automatically.
4. First time? « Create my OpenPGP identity ».
5. Fill in birth name, given names, date of birth, country of birth, email.
6. Verify the information.
7. Print the QR codes (at least three sheets — see below).
8. Scan the QR codes — the key is etched into your YubiKey/NitroKey.
9. Done: your OpenPGP ID is born.

Everything offline, no third-party server call. Video demo in the release article .

Backup: paper QR codes, secret sharing

The foopgp tools generate and print your private key as paper fragments, encrypted and split using a secret sharing (Shamir) scheme: by default, 3 fragments out of 5 printed are enough to reconstitute the key.

Fragment 1/5	Fragment 2/5	Fragment 5/5

A few properties to know:

• No isolated fragment reveals anything — you need the quorum (3 here) to reconstitute.
• Offline by construction: fragments live on paper only, never on a cloud, never on a connected disk.
• Resilience: losing one or two fragments is not fatal; losing your YubiKey is not either, as long as you have your quorum of fragments.
• Entrusting fragments to people you trust is a common strategy: one fragment with a relative, one with a friend, one in a safe — and impersonation becomes very hard.

Transposing to a physical key

Once your private key has been fragmented onto paper sheets, another foopgp tool reads the QR codes via a webcam or scanner and etches the keys into a YubiKey or a NitroKey. The private key never touches a hard drive nor a third-party service.

From there, your identity is exercised from your hand on any Djibian machine: sign, decrypt, authenticate over SSH — the physical key remains the single source of signature.

In short

OpenPGP ID makes real digital sovereignty possible: no password to forget, no cloud vault to trust, no dependence on an external identity provider. An identity that is yours, anchored in a physical object you carry, and usable everywhere.

While others sell you technologies that enslave you, foopgp enables everyone to embrace technologies that serve us. Safer, leaner, and entirely sovereign.