---
id: "hardman-building-active-discovery"
type: "paper"
type_label: "Papers and paper collections"
title: "Building Active Discovery"
maintainer: "Daniel Hardman"
authors:
  - "Daniel Hardman"
date: "2026-08-12"
year: 2026
reading_level: "implementer"
reading_level_label: "Implementer"
reading_level_meaning: "developers working in or against the code"
evidence: "informative"
evidence_meaning: "an author's paper, deck, tutorial or post explaining the suite"
status: "active"
status_meaning: "changed within the last six months, or a live service"
access: "public"
access_meaning: "anyone with the link"
topics:
  - "theory"
  - "prototypes"
roles:
  - "developer"
  - "security-architect"
  - "researcher"
source_url: "https://dhh1128.github.io/papers/active-discovery.html"
source_license: null
source_license_note: null
found_on: "hardman-papers"
kerisse_credit: false
abstract_license: "CC BY 4.0"
abstract_license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
abstract_attribution: "KSKB, the KERISuite Knowledge Base (https://kskb.dev/)"
last_checked: "2026-10-15"
kskb_url: "https://kskb.dev/cards/hardman-building-active-discovery/"
kskb_app_url: "https://kskb.dev/#item/hardman-building-active-discovery"
kskb_record_url: "https://kskb.dev/data/kskb/resources/hardman-building-active-discovery"
kskb_markdown_url: "https://kskb.dev/export/cards/hardman-building-active-discovery.md"
---

# Building Active Discovery

A guidance paper by Daniel Hardman describing how to build privacy-preserving discovery that requires the active participation of the party being sought, from existing architectures: split blind matching modeled on double-blind trials, Tor v3 onion services for rendezvous, verifiable attestations of the seeker, and provisional anonymity. It recommends KERI with ACDCs for the attestations and states what the design does not deliver. For designers of privacy-preserving discovery and identity systems.

Labels: reading level Implementer; evidence informative (an author's paper, deck, tutorial or post explaining the suite).
Source: https://dhh1128.github.io/papers/active-discovery.html (license not recorded).
The abstract is KSKB's own text under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/; credit KSKB, the KERISuite Knowledge Base (https://kskb.dev/).