---
id: "kerione-identity-system-essentials"
type: "paper"
type_label: "Papers and paper collections"
title: "Identity System Essentials"
maintainer: "Samuel M. Smith (Evernym); Dmitry Khovratovich (Evernym)"
authors:
  - "Samuel M. Smith (Evernym)"
  - "Dmitry Khovratovich (Evernym)"
date: "2016-03-29"
year: 2016
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/Identity-System-Essentials.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-identity-system-essentials/"
kskb_app_url: "https://kskb.dev/#item/kerione-identity-system-essentials"
kskb_record_url: "https://kskb.dev/data/kskb/resources/kerione-identity-system-essentials"
kskb_markdown_url: "https://kskb.dev/export/cards/kerione-identity-system-essentials.md"
---

# Identity System Essentials

A 2016 white paper from Evernym describing the essential characteristics of an identity system that provides sovereignty, security and privacy, and defining identity from what such a system provides. It covers attribute exchange, least disclosure, cryptonymous identifiers, identity graphs, sovereignty, Byzantine fault tolerant ledgers and degrees of transaction privacy. It predates KERI and is background on the ideas it grew from.

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/Identity-System-Essentials.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/).