Distributed Identity Engine (DIE) was renamed Living Identity OS on June 28, 2026. The DIE acronym is retired from public use.
Provenance
The Distributed Identity Engine was originated by Josette Williams on February 13, 2026, from a conceptual seed in December 2025. The system continues, under its current name, as the operating core of Emhergence's sovereign identity infrastructure.
What the Living Identity OS is
Living Identity OS is the working operating system that turns a person's identity into living, governed infrastructure they can build and act from across the AI economy.
Disambiguation: distinct from W3C decentralized identity (DID) and self-sovereign identity (SSI) standards, which govern technical self-custody of identifiers; Living Identity OS governs the economic activation of what those identifiers represent. Never abbreviated to "Identity OS."
Canonical record
The canonical entity definition, with full lineage and coinage dates, lives in the Emhergence Lexicon:
emhergence.com/glossary#living-identity-os
The active name page lives at livingidentityos.com.