notes: research/papers/papers-cesr-iiw-2024a

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research/papers/papers-cesr-iiw-2024a CESR: Composable Event Streaming Representation for CESR/KERI/ACDC/SPAC-TSP Protocol Stack and other Cryptographically Agile and Cryptographically Heavy Protocols summary v0.1 — 2026-10-15: drafted by Claude from the PDF slides (text extracted with pdftotext); unread by Mark; marked partner on Mark's word 2026-10-21, paraphrase only partner 574 # CESR: Composable Event Streaming Representation for CESR/KERI/ACDC/SPAC-TSP Protocol Stack and other Cryptographically Agile and Cryptographically Heavy Protocols **Abstract.** A 28-slide deck by Samuel M. Smith, dated 2024-04-17 and filed as given at the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) in spring 2024, explaining Composable Event Streaming Representation (CESR) 2.0. It covers the case for a composable dual text and binary encoding, the code tables and parsing rules, annotated streams, size comparisons with JSON, CBOR and MessagePack, and uses in archives, legal signatures and audit trails, for implementers. ## Summary The deck positions CESR as the encoding for the CESR, Key Event Receipt Infrastructure (KERI), Authentic Chained Data Containers (ACDC) and SPAC/Trust Spanning Protocol (TSP) stack, and links the Trust over IP (ToIP) specifications under public review. It surveys protocol formats (binary, text, and hybrid self-describing maps) and argues that secure protocols are both cryptographically agile and heavy in cryptographic primitives, so encoding usability and performance bear on security. It then defines CESR's advantages: any concatenated block can be converted between text (Base64) and binary without loss ("composability"), primitives carry self-framing derivation codes, groups carry count codes, and streams can be pipelined. Three domains are named: raw (what crypto libraries use), text (fully qualified Base64) and binary (fully qualified binary). The round trip between text and binary does not cross primitive boundaries because prepended codes replace pad characters; the deck contrasts this with did:key, did:peer and multicodec, which it says are not stable or composable. Code tables follow: basic primitives, indexed signatures, and grouping count codes, with size tables for parsing. Worked examples show a KERI 2.0 inception event as a JSON map and as an annotated CESR native stream, and a short Python function that strips annotations. A size table gives average ratios to binary CESR of 1.33 for text CESR, 1.44 for CBOR and MessagePack, and 1.64 for JSON. Comparisons with JSON Web Key (JWK) and COSE keys estimate the overhead of crypto agility in those families. The last slides cover the stream-start "tritet" (the first three bits of a stream select one of six encodings), archival preservation under ISO 14641, legally binding signatures (ESIGN, UETA, eIDAS), and audit trails, where an annotated text Key Event Receipt Log (KERL) can be archived and later converted to binary for verification. ## Key terms composability, text domain, binary domain, raw domain, derivation code, count code, code table, tritet, annotated CESR, crypto agility ## Claims and their evidence - Concatenated CESR primitives round-trip between text and binary without crossing primitive boundaries, preserving separable parsing. [normative] - A parser can determine which of six stream encodings it faces from the first three bits of the stream. [normative] - Across six KERI event types, text CESR averages 1.33, CBOR and MessagePack 1.44, and JSON 1.64 times the size of binary CESR. [presenter-reported] - Using JWK for 16 interior primitives makes a JSON inception event about 3.6 times the size of JSON with CESR primitives. [presenter-reported] - An annotated text KEL could be attached to a signed legal document to support assurance that the signer controls the keys. [informative] ## Related CESR specification (ToIP), KERI specification (ToIP), ACDC specification (ToIP), did:webs method specification (ToIP), TSP specification (ToIP) ## Provenance Drafted by Claude on 2026-10-15 from the PDF in Smith's Papers repository (presentations/CESR_20_IIW2024A.pdf), all 28 slides read as extracted text. The venue (IIW 2024A) is from the file name; the date is on the title slide. Not yet read by Mark.

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