KYC Registry

A KYC registry (or identity registry) is an on-chain record of which wallet addresses belong to investors who have passed KYC and are eligible to hold a given security. It is the source of truth that a compliant token consults: before a transfer, the contract checks the registry and rejects any address that is not verified and eligible.

The registry is closely related to the whitelist - in practice they often work together. The whitelist is the list of approved addresses enforced on transfers; the KYC registry is the identity layer that records why an address is approved (who it is, what verification they passed, what they are eligible for). Standards like ERC-3643 are built around exactly this identity-first model.

For an issuer, a KYC registry is central compliance infrastructure. Done well, it lets verification be reusable: an investor verified once can be recognised across offerings that trust the same registry, rather than redoing KYC for every deal. That improves onboarding without weakening compliance.

For an investor, the registry is why "only eligible investors can hold this token" is true at the code level - and why, once verified, your wallet can hold or receive the security while unverified wallets cannot. It is mostly invisible, but it is the backbone of on-chain eligibility. Because it governs who can hold a security, how it is managed and secured is itself a compliance-critical responsibility.