---
id: "kerione-acdc-white-paper"
type: "paper"
type_label: "Papers and paper collections"
title: "Authentic Chained Data Containers (ACDC)"
maintainer: "Samuel M. Smith"
authors:
  - "Samuel M. Smith"
date: "2021-01-14"
year: 2021
reading_level: "practitioner"
reading_level_label: "Practitioner"
reading_level_meaning: "architects, product people and adopters who know identity systems"
evidence: "informative"
evidence_meaning: "an author's paper, deck, tutorial or post explaining the suite"
status: "quiet"
status_meaning: "no change in six to eighteen months; still correct"
access: "public"
access_meaning: "anyone with the link"
topics:
  - "theory"
  - "history"
roles:
  - "security-architect"
  - "researcher"
source_url: "https://github.com/SmithSamuelM/Papers/blob/master/whitepapers/ACDC.web.pdf"
source_license: null
source_license_note: null
found_on: "keri-one-resources"
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: "2026-10-14"
kskb_url: "https://kskb.dev/cards/kerione-acdc-white-paper/"
kskb_app_url: "https://kskb.dev/#item/kerione-acdc-white-paper"
kskb_record_url: "https://kskb.dev/data/kskb/resources/kerione-acdc-white-paper"
kskb_markdown_url: "https://kskb.dev/export/cards/kerione-acdc-white-paper.md"
---

# Authentic Chained Data Containers (ACDC)

Samuel M. Smith's 2021 white paper defining authentic chained data containers (ACDCs) as authentic data containers carrying authentic provenance chains, for data supply chains and rich authorization. It evaluates whether the W3C Verifiable Credential standard could be extended to serve as the concrete implementation and how ZCAP-LD compares, and works through a purchasing-authorization use case. Background on the origins of ACDC rather than the current specification.

Labels: reading level Practitioner; evidence informative (an author's paper, deck, tutorial or post explaining the suite).
Source: https://github.com/SmithSamuelM/Papers/blob/master/whitepapers/ACDC.web.pdf (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/).