Canonical identity.
Verifiable authority.
An open protocol for persistent identity, verifiable credentials, scoped authority and delegation across humans, organizations and agents.
Wallets are accounts.
Credentials are claims.
Authority is scoped.
Identity persists.
One protocol. Three actor types.
Every actor in Catenor receives its own canonical identity. Authority flows through explicit delegation, not inheritance.
Persistent identity
A canonical subject that persists across changing wallets, authentication providers, networks and applications.
Verifiable authority
Companies, funds, trusts and institutions with explicit roles, relationships and scoped capabilities.
Bounded delegation
Autonomous actors with their own canonical identity, acting under explicitly delegated and constrained authority.
The identity persists.
The bindings can change.
A Catenor DID anchors the canonical subject. Wallets, providers, applications, authentication methods and networks remain external bindings around that subject — not the identity itself.
The subject remains.Everything around it can change.
Catenor separates canonical identity from the external systems that represent, authenticate or execute on behalf of that identity.
The DID belongs to the subject — not to the wallet, onboarding provider, application, network or system that first encountered it. External accounts and identifiers are bindings. They may be added, rotated, revoked or replaced without silently creating a new canonical subject.
Stable protocol identity for the subject.
Wallets, providers, apps, authentication and networks.
Bindings remain private by default unless disclosure is required.
Authority should be explainable.
Every meaningful action can be traced through verifiable authority grants, capabilities, delegation and status. Every edge in the chain must be valid.
Relationships describe connections. Capabilities describe permissions. These are never conflated. A relationship like OFFICER_OF does not automatically grant treasury authority.
Delegated authority ⊆ delegator authority. Delegation cannot create authority that the delegator does not hold. Delegability must be explicit.
Private evidence in.
Minimum necessary fact out.
Sensitive identity, credential and policy evidence is evaluated confidentially. Only the minimum necessary verifiable result is disclosed.
PRIVATE INPUT
date of birth
identity-provider evidence
private credential
organizational document
↓
CONFIDENTIAL VERIFICATION
↓
MINIMIZED OUTPUT
AGE_OVER_21 = true
AUTHORITY_VALID = true
SAME_SUBJECT = true
ALLOWConfidential verification may use TEEs, MPC, zero-knowledge proof systems, hardware-backed isolation, or hybrid mechanisms. The protocol defines required properties, not one implementation.
Credential identity ≠ financial execution.
Catenor distinguishes cryptographic key purposes. Under the Financial Security Profile, credential assertion keys and financial execution keys must use cryptographically distinct private-key material.
Verification keys
Assertion, authentication and recovery keys appear in the DID Document. These prove claims and authenticate the subject without exposing financial accounts.
Financial execution
The mapping between the canonical subject and external financial accounts is private by default and uses cryptographically separate key material.
Giving one private key two different labels does not satisfy this requirement. The private-key material must be cryptographically distinct.
Extends. Does not replace.
Catenor builds on established W3C standards and adds protocol semantics for authority, delegation, continuity and policy evaluation.
W3C DID Core
Decentralized identifier model for canonical subjects.
W3C Verifiable Credentials
Issuer, subject, holder, verifier and credential semantics.
W3C Data Integrity
Cryptographic proof suites for credential signing.
The core specification must remain independent of specific vendors, providers, blockchains or infrastructure. Reference implementations may select concrete technologies without redefining the protocol.
From subject to decision.
The canonical flow from identity through credentials, authority and policy to an explicit decision.
Catenor determines whether an action is permitted under identity, authority and policy semantics. Execution authorization is a separate layer. Both may be required.
Catenor Protocol
Identity should persist.
Authority should be verifiable.