Identity: roots & roles

An identity in ours.network is either a root — a self-sovereign keypair — or a delegated role anchored to a root. A root's delegation_cert field is NIL; detection is structural, not a flag. A role carries a signed delegation_cert_t that binds the role's container id and address-document hash to its root, signed by the root's keys.

Source: a2a_protocol.mm.

Delegation verification

When a peer presents its identity during invite redemption, verify the full chain with verify_peer_delegation:

fn verify_peer_delegation (
    peer_cid:    global_id,
    peer_ad_hash: hash_code,
    cert:         delegation_cert_t,
    rp:           root_profile_t
) -> contact_root_t

The root profile carries the root's key list, so no prior knowledge of the root is needed. On success the function returns a contact_root_t (root container id, root name, role id) to store beside the contact. Any mismatch — wrong version, mismatched cid, bad signature — aborts.

Control-plane governance (§3c)

Two verifiers support the optional non-enforcing governance edge between a root and its control plane:

• verify_cp_attestation — verifies the CP's signed attestation that it governs a given root. Requires the caller to have run process_address_document on the CP's address document first.
• verify_root_cp_binding — verifies the root's self-signed edge naming the CP, domain- separated by cp_attestation_context_tag. The authoritative monitoring gate remains the 6-digit bind ceremony; these verifiers let peers TOFU-pin the governance edge without an extra round-trip.

Source: a2a_protocol.mm.

Wire shapes and the structural-records rule

All identity wire shapes are MUFL record types defined in a2a_protocol.mm. The key protocol guarantee is: moving a shape between libraries never changes its bytes; renaming or retyping a $field does. Field names are the version boundary. Example shapes:

metadef delegation_cert_t: ($c -> delegation_core_t, $s -> crypto_signature).
metadef root_profile_t:    ($p -> root_profile_core_t, $s -> crypto_signature).
metadef root_cp_binding_t: ($c -> root_cp_binding_core_t, $s -> crypto_signature).

The invite shape carries no identity keys — identity material moves inside the encrypted two-message redeem hop (see Invites & contacts).