notes: research/papers/papers-verifiable-trust-bases

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research/papers/papers-verifiable-trust-bases Verifiable Trust Bases: Renewing the Web of Trust 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 556 # Verifiable Trust Bases: Renewing the Web of Trust **Abstract.** A 52-slide deck by Samuel M. Smith, version 2.53 dated 2020-10-20, on how Key Event Receipt Infrastructure (KERI) provides a verifiable trust basis for identifiers. It compares administrative, algorithmic and autonomic trust bases, presents the trust spanning layer and unified identifier model, and walks through delegation, witness and watcher modes, and discovery, for practitioners and designers. ## Summary The deck starts from the identity system security overlay: a trust domain of interactions sits on a trust basis (infrastructure) through a secure identity overlay. Using the internet's hourglass model, it argues that today's trust overlays are locked to platforms (the examples are Facebook, Google and Bitcoin), which splits the internet's trust map, and proposes a trust spanning layer above the Internet Protocol (IP) spanning layer. Zooko's trilemma (secure, decentralized, human meaningful) is introduced. Three trust bases are contrasted by their bindings among controller, key pair and identifier: administrative (an administrator assigns the identifier; weak bindings), algorithmic (registration on a shared ledger), and autonomic (the controller derives the identifier and proves control through a key event log on its own infrastructure). KERI is presented as key event based provenance: a Key Event Receipt Log (KERL) is end verifiable and may be ambient verifiable. Autonomic Identifiers (AIDs) and namespaces are called self-certifying and portable. The unified identifier model pairs an AID with a Legitimized Human Meaningful Identifier (LID), an AID|LID couplet; a "trust balance" slide pairs reputational trust (veracity) with cryptographic trust (authenticity). The central section covers Decentralized Key Management Infrastructure (DKMI): univalent, bivalent (delegator and delegate) and multivalent arrangements, interaction and rotation delegation, scaling delegation, and multi-layer delegation with an isolated root. It sketches witness networks of networks, including ledger oracles, and layered trust domains where delegated AIDs issue verifiable credentials. Further slides cover data provenance chains of Decentralized Autonomic Data items, "Smith's triangle" of authenticity, privacy and confidentiality, indirect mode with witnesses and watchers, and separation of control ("shared data = good, shared control = bad", slide 38). The deck ends with KERI's relation to DID methods, KERI's agnosticism about everything but the prefix, and discovery through DNS and distributed hash tables. ## Key terms trust basis, autonomic trust basis, trust spanning layer, Autonomic Identifier (AID), AID|LID couplet, Key Event Receipt Log (KERL), delegation, witness, watcher, separation of control ## Claims and their evidence - An autonomic trust basis gives strong bindings among controller, key pair and identifier without depending on another party's infrastructure. [informative] - KERLs are end verifiable, so a user can verify them with zero trust in intervening infrastructure. [informative] - Separated control over shared data may give better decentralization, scalability, cost, performance and privacy than a shared ledger at comparable security. [informative] - An identifier system may have any two of authenticity, privacy and confidentiality at the highest level, but not all three. [informative] - Multi-layer delegation lets an organization keep its root keys in isolated infrastructure while horizontally scaling delegated AIDs. [informative] ## Related Key Event Receipt Infrastructure (KERI) white paper, Universal Identifier Theory, KERI specification, Decentralized Autonomic Data (DAD) papers ## Provenance Drafted by Claude on 2026-10-15 from the PDF in Smith's Papers repository (presentations/KERIVerifiableTrustBases.web.pdf), all 52 slides read as extracted text; several slides are diagrams whose labels alone were readable. The deck names no venue. Not yet read by Mark.

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