dSociety | Learn
Key Event Receipt Infrastructure (KERI)
Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI)
Ed25519
About KERI

About AIDs

A KERI AID is a self-certifying identifier used in KERI (Key Event Receipt Infrastructure).
  • AID stands for Autonomic Identifier
  • It's basically the root identity for an entity (person, organisation, device, agent) in KERI
  • It's not “an account” on some registry — it's an identifier you can generate yourself and prove control over cryptographically
AID is an identifier derived from cryptographic material, typically:
  • a public key (or multiple keys)
  • plus rules about how key rotation / thresholds work
AID is an identifier derived from cryptographic material, typically:
  • a public key (or multiple keys)
    • d
  • plus rules about how key rotation / thresholds work
So the identifier is bound to the keys, and the control of the identifier is proven by signing key events.
KERI AIDs are designed to solve classic SSI problems:
  • no central registry required
  • key rotation without losing identity (huge)
  • portable identity (move across systems)
  • witnessing / multi-party validation without needing a blockchain
  • supports strong governance semantics like:
    • multi-sig thresholds
    • delegation
    • key compromise recovery patterns
The cryptographic algorithms used for AIDs often rely on elliptic curve cryptography, which offers good security with relatively small keys, making it well suited to the constrained environments where AIDs are often used.
Curve algorithm for AIDs...

Ed25519

This is a specific elliptic curve signature scheme using a variant of Schnorr's signature and Twisted Edwards curves. It offers high security and performance, and it's widely used in blockchain systems like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others.

About ACDCs

Authentic Chained Data Containers (ACDC) are a credential format / security model that can secure credentials and build chains of authenticity/authority.
  • W3C VC is the conceptual model.
  • ACDC is an implementation that makes provenance + chaining extremely natural.
  • The vLEI ecosystem explicitly uses ACDC built on KERI.
Components
  • Credential = ACDC
  • Issuer = AID
  • Chains of Authority = ACDC graph / DAG
  • Verification uses KEL(s), witnesses, receipts

CESR

CESR stands for Composable Event Streaming Representation.
The functionality on this page is for learning only.
In a real application you would not generate and display the private keys in the browser without careful security considerations.