Technologie
The Keychain Protocol
What a keychain is, why it matters, and how the protocol coordinates key rollover at scale.
To operate through — and recover from — degradations in the security of their environment, all automated systems need to be able to generate and use new cryptographic private keys. This process is known as key rollover, or break-glass recovery in some sectors.
But rolling over your own keys is only half the problem. The machine or agent's counterparties need to be able to handle the rollover of the corresponding public keys in a coordinated way — otherwise trust breaks the moment a key changes.
A keychain is a sequence of public keys, each element of which is cryptographically signed by the respective private key of the previous element's public key. That signed lineage lets anyone follow a keychain from an earlier point to its current key with cryptographic certainty.
The Keychain Protocol provides the storage and coordination mechanism for achieving this at scale. It is the foundation of zero-trust identity and data security for your autonomous systems.
Comment ça fonctionne
The protocol rests on a small set of design principles. Together they keep identity in the hands of its owner while letting counterparties trust a keychain without trusting any central operator.
- Decentralized public-key infrastructure
- A global, censorship-resistant, tamper-evident, blockchain-agnostic PKI. No single authority can revoke, block, or rewrite a keychain, and there is no single point of failure.
- Self-sovereign keychain management
- You create and extend your own keychains. There is no certificate authority and no custodian in the trust path.
- Pseudonymous at the foundational layer
- A keychain is public-key lineage with no identity attribution. Who is responsible for the keys — and whether they are publicly discoverable — is controlled selectively and conditionally at the application layer by Personas.
- Multi-layered caching
- Choose how keychains are stored and distributed: local, centralized, or global; permanent or ephemeral; centralized or fully decentralized — to match each deployment.
- Key-event subscription
- Subscribe to key events, such as the extension of a keychain, so your systems learn about a rollover the moment it happens.
- Separate signature and encryption keychains
- Signature keys and encryption keys live on separate keychains, so each key's lifecycle and exposure can be managed independently.
Architecture
The protocol is the foundation of a vertically integrated stack. Capabilities span identity, advanced key management, data security, verifiable credentials, and application-level consensus — with coverage across online, offline, cloud, on-prem, and embedded environments.
Identity
Self-sovereign cryptographic identity that persists across rails, merchants, platforms, sessions, and key-rollover events.
Key Management
Full key lifecycle — generation, distribution, rollover, and revocation — with automatic counterparty coordination.
Data Security
End-to-end encryption, digital signatures, and cryptographic redaction. Data is protected at rest, in transit, and in use.
Verifiable Credentials
Issue, delegate, and verify credentials with nested chains. Prove exactly what's needed — nothing more.
Consensus
Application-level authenticated consensus for multi-party agreements. PROPOSE/PRECOMMIT/COMMIT with full auditability.
Universal Coverage
Online, offline, cloud, on-prem, embedded. Under 16 MB RAM. Deploys where your workloads already run.