- From: Christian Hommrich <christian.hommrich@trailprotocol.org>
- Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2026 11:12:48 +0200
- To: public-credentials@w3.org
- Cc: mwherman@parallelspace.net, moses.ma@futurelabconsulting.com, steven_rowat@sunshine.net, mahmoud@mavennet.com
Hi all, Three quick threads, since the last 36 hours covered a lot of ground: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ @Moses -- on your "id/ids" identity-bound pronoun proposal: That maps cleanly onto the persistent-identity-anchor problem TRAIL was built around. A did:trail DID gives an agent exactly what "id/ids" implies: a stable, verifiable identity that survives reputation-tier changes, role reassignments, and registry migrations, with cryptographic continuity. The pronoun and the DID become two views of the same anchor. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ @Michael -- on draft-herman-did-pnl-00: Read it carefully. Your §1.3 framing -- did:pnl identifies a role profile, not an agent instance, with the agent claiming PNL membership via a PnlRoleCredential -- makes the relationship to instance-level DID methods straightforward. did:trail fits cleanly into that pattern as the identity + trust anchor for the agent that holds your role profile. Two seams I'd like to highlight, both as constructive contributions rather than critique: (1) Dimension D `trustLevel` as fast-path filter, evidence as the substrate. Your enum (SELF < ORG < 3PVER < GOVVER < VCL2 < VCL3) is useful as a quick filter -- "accept at least 3PVER". But two agents both labelled 3PVER can carry very different verification depth. A Big4 full-population audit (8,000 transactions, 90 days old, 2 findings) and a boutique sampling audit (50 transactions, 380 days old, 0 findings) collapse to the same token. EU AI Act Articles 13/14 push that decision to the relying party, not the credential issuer. TRAIL PR #12 (evidence-weighted Trust Score) sketches an EvidenceClaim VC-bundle pattern that sits next to your trustLevel token without replacing it -- token for fast-path, evidence for risk-mapped evaluation. (2) Cascading revocation for high-authority profiles. §11.2 covers Status List 2021 and DIDComm-push to holder inboxes. Both work agent-by-agent. When an accreditation body revokes a compromised issuer, each PnlRoleCredential under that issuer needs to be invalidated individually -- thousands of pushes, or a status-list pull window of hours during which compromised credentials remain accepted. TRAIL PR #13 (Trust Anchor Model + Revocation Propagation) defines a single anchor-level revocation event that invalidates all dependent credentials at once. For PAYEXEC / EXEC / SYSADMIN profiles, that's the difference between damage limitation and damage propagation. Concrete proposal: I'd be glad to open a PR against mwherman2000/SVRN7 adding §13.5 "Binding to did:trail Identity & Trust Anchor". Mirrors the shape of your existing §13.1 (did:drn) and §13.4 (OID4VC) sections. About 1-2 pages, with JSON snippets for the trailAnchorDid field on PnlRoleCredential, the additive verification step, and an optional evidenceBundle reference for high-authority contexts. Tracks the same interop pattern your §13 already establishes -- did:pnl identifies the role, the bound DID method handles instance identity and trust mechanics. Happy to sketch the PR for your review before opening it formally if that's easier. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ For the broader thread: the layering question -- "instance DID vs role profile DID" -- seems to be where this discussion converges across several proposals (PNL, AIR, the Morrow signature pattern). It's a pattern worth naming explicitly. Happy to co-author a short CCG note on the layering pattern if there's appetite in this group -- across PNL, AIR, Morrow-style signature binding, and did:trail. Repos + notes for reference: - TRAIL spec + PRs: https://github.com/trailprotocol/trail-did-method - Layering analysis (did:pnl vs did:trail), with JSON schema sketches for a §13.5 binding proposal: https://github.com/trailprotocol/trail-did-method/discussions/15 Best, Christian Hommrich TRAIL Protocol https://trailprotocol.org
Received on Tuesday, 21 April 2026 09:13:07 UTC