European Digital Financial Trust Framework: From Legal Identity to Programmable Settlement

This document presents the European Digital Financial Trust Framework (EDFTF), an independently developed conceptual interoperability and trust architecture connecting legal identity, verifiable credentials, metadata governance, cryptographic evidence, verified business events, programmable compliance, and regulated financial settlement. The framework illustrates how existing European legal, regulatory, and technical instruments can interact through interoperable digital infrastructures and governed trust mechanisms. It encompasses traditional and distributed financial infrastructures, tokenised financial assets, trusted verification services, and programmable financial execution. A central principle is the separation of authoritative source systems, verifiable evidence, institutional controls, and financial settlement. The architecture supports purpose-specific verification and interoperability without requiring the consolidation of underlying datasets, migration to a common ledger, or the use of any particular settlement technology. The framework incorporates relevant European regulatory domains, including eIDAS 2.0, MiCA, DORA, GDPR, AML/CFT requirements, payment legislation, and the DLT Pilot Regime, while maintaining technology neutrality, legal accountability, proportionality, and institutional responsibility. The document represents a functional interoperability and trust-process architecture rather than a physical deployment topology or a proposed replacement for existing regulatory frameworks. This is an independent conceptual framework, not an official European Union framework or an endorsed regulatory architecture. Versioning and Future Development This technical note documents Version 5.1 as a standalone reference for research, institutional dialogue, and further development. Future corrected, expanded or substantially revised versions may be published separately and assigned their own DOI identifiers. Related research publications, including peer-reviewed articles, may also be published independently and linked through appropriate bibliographic metadata. When reproducing or adapting this work, please provide appropriate attribution and cite the original publication and DOI. Citation is also encouraged when building upon the framework's concepts.