Subject: I-D Action: draft-ssmith-said-01.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2021 14:14:12 -0800

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.

        Title           : Self-Addressing IDentifier (SAID)
        Author          : S. Smith
	Filename        : draft-ssmith-said-01.txt
	Pages           : 11
	Date            : 2021-11-28

Abstract:
   A SAID (Self-Addressing IDentifier) is a special type of content
   addressable identifier based on encoded cryptographic digest that is
   self-referential.  The SAID derivation protocol defined herein
   enables verification that a given SAID is uniquely cryptographically
   bound to a serialization that includes the SAID as a field in that
   serialization.  Embedding a SAID as a field in the associated
   serialization indicates a preferred content addressable identifier
   for that serialization that facilitates greater interoperability,
   reduced ambiguity, and enhanced security when reasoning about the
   serialization.  Moreover given sufficient cryptographic strength, a
   cryptographic commitment such as a signature, digest, or another
   SAID, to a given SAID is essentially equivalent to a commitment to
   its associated serialization.  Any change to the serialization
   invalidates its SAID thereby ensuring secure immutability evident
   reasoning with SAIDs about serializations or equivalently their
   SAIDs.  Thus SAIDs better facilitate immutably referenced data
   serializations for applications such as Verifiable Credentials or
   Ricardian Contracts.

   SAIDs are encoded with CESR (Composable Event Streaming
   Representation) [CESR] which includes a pre-pended derivation code
   that encodes the cryptographic suite or algorithm used to generate
   the digest.  A CESR primitive's primary expression (alone or in
   combination ) is textual using Base64 URL Safe characters.  CESR
   primitives may be round-tripped (alone or in combination) to a
   compact binary representation without loss.  The CESR derivation code
   enables cryptographic digest algorithm agility in systems that use
   SAIDs as content addresses.  Each serialization may use a different
   cryptographic digest algorithm as indicated by its derivation code.
   This provides interoperable future proofing.  CESR was developed for
   the [KERI] protocol.

The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ssmith-said/

There is also an HTML version available at:
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ssmith-said-01.html

A diff from the previous version is available at:
https://www.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=draft-ssmith-said-01

Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/