---
id: "kerione-universal-identifier-theory"
type: "paper"
type_label: "Papers and paper collections"
title: "Universal Identifier Theory"
maintainer: "Samuel M. Smith, Ph.D."
authors:
  - "Samuel M. Smith, Ph.D."
date: "2025-09-14"
year: 2025
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"
  - "roles"
  - "governance"
roles:
  - "security-architect"
  - "standards-policy"
  - "investor"
  - "business-development"
  - "researcher"
source_url: "https://github.com/SmithSamuelM/Papers/blob/master/whitepapers/IdentifierTheory_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-universal-identifier-theory/"
kskb_app_url: "https://kskb.dev/#item/kerione-universal-identifier-theory"
kskb_record_url: "https://kskb.dev/data/kskb/resources/kerione-universal-identifier-theory"
kskb_markdown_url: "https://kskb.dev/export/cards/kerione-universal-identifier-theory.md"
---

# Universal Identifier Theory

A 40-page white paper presenting a unified model of identifiers in which cryptographic autonomic identifiers (AIDs) provide trust domains that legitimize human-meaningful identifiers (LIDs), expressed as the aid|lid couplet. It covers trust bases, separable roots of trust, key rotation versus statement revocation, multi-valent key management, promulgation, verifiable credential issuance and verifiable algorithms for LID issuance, for identifier system designers.

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/IdentifierTheory_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/).