At the Trust Over IP Foundation (ToIP), the 3 specifications KERI, ACDC, and CESR are under public review. These standards relate to the GLEIF-led vLEI (Verifiable Legal Entity Identifier) initiative. The deadline is April 20.

AUTHENTIC CHAINED DATA CONTAINERS (ACDC) TASK FORCE ANNOUNCES PUBLIC REVIEW

  1. Key Event Receipt Infrastructure (KERI) specification
  2. Authentic Chained Data Containers specification (ACDC)
  3. Composable Event Streaming Representation specification (CESR)

According to ToIP:

Together, these specifications provide a blueprint for building a truly decentralized, authentic, and verifiable ecosystem of identifiers, “credentials” (see footnote), and authentication.

The specifications describe a set of unique and innovative features:

  • Truly unlimited-duration identifiers through pre-rotation of keys;
  • A cryptographic root of trust;
  • Chained “credentials” (see footnote), with fully verifiable proofs of ownership and authorship;
  • A serialization format equally optimized for both textual and binary representations, with unique properties that support look-ahead streaming for uncompromising scalability.

This suite of specifications is augmented by subspecifications such as Out-Of-Band Introduction, self-addressing identifiers, and a groundbreaking “path signature” approach for signed containers, which are needed to provide a comprehensive solution for organizational identity.

(Source) ToIP

Because these specifications are used by the GLEIF-led vLEI initiative, they are expected to have a significant impact. At one point there was talk of standardizing them at the IETF, but due to various circumstances it appears that they will instead be standardized at ToIP. This also appears to be ToIP’s first standardization effort.

Unfortunately, I do not expect to have time to read them myself, but I hope people in the cryptography community will read them and submit comments.

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