The Estonian e-ID system and Qualified Electronic Signature in the EU are good ideas. The government issues you a signed identity. You can use that signed identity to counter-sign challenges in places you'd otherwise (in the US) need to use a Social Security Number and a convoluted private market identity-verification system (for example, the stupid "were you associated with this address 4.5 years ago" things). Like…
This says mDL. The QR code is at most a cryptographically signed attestation of relevant attributes (eg age, name, etc). Not sure if this made it in, but originally the ISO group had been talking about also signing >18/>21 of sharing the actual birthday for things like restricted sales. I don’t recall discussing QR codes as it was supposed to be NFC but maybe that changed (don’t see a mention of QR codes on the site)…
Anyway, for anything to work in the US, there needs to be an incentive for businesses to use this system, and right now, there isn't one for point-of-sale driver's license use, in my opinion. It's technology (perceived as unreliable, slow, expensive) that can break, vs. looking at an ID, which isn't without its faults but is a simple system everyone understands.
If there were a really fast, simple, cheap, readily available system for age verification which was pushed to bars, I could see this system catching on, but "limited private pilot programs" aren't it.
And that's pretty much my point - starting with places where technology is already required (banking etc.) makes more sense in many ways than starting with driver's license replacement. The issue here is that the horribly broken identity system in the US is Federal (Social Security) while these electronic systems are State.