Track papers across labs, topics, and trends.
Search papers, labs, and topics across Lattice.
This paper introduces Source Known Identifiers (SKIDs), a novel three-tier identifier system designed for distributed applications needing storage efficiency, chronological sortability, origin metadata, zero-lookup verifiability, confidentiality, and multi-century addressability. SKIDs use a 64-bit integer as a primary key, extend it to a 128-bit UUID with a MAC for origin verification, and then encrypt the UUID using AES-256 for external confidentiality. The system provides deterministic bidirectional transformations between the tiers, addressing all six desired properties.
Finally, a unified identifier system that balances storage efficiency, chronological ordering, origin verification, and confidentiality for distributed applications.
Distributed applications need identifiers that satisfy storage efficiency, chronological sortability, origin metadata embedding, zero-lookup verifiability, confidentiality for external consumers, and multi-century addressability. Based on our literature survey, no existing scheme provides all six of these identifier properties within a unified system. This paper introduces Source Known Identifiers (SKIDs), a three-tier identity system that projects a single entity identity across trust boundaries, addressing all six properties. The first tier, Source Known ID (SKID), is a 64-bit signed integer embedding a timestamp with a 250-millisecond precision, application topology, and a per-entity-type sequence counter. It serves as the database primary key, providing compact storage (8 bytes) and natural B-tree ordering for optimized database indexing. The second tier, Source Known Entity ID (SKEID), extends the SKID into a 128-bit Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) compatible value by adding an entity type discriminator, an epoch selector, and a BLAKE3 keyed message authentication code (MAC). SKEIDs enable zero-lookup verification of identifier origin, integrity, and entity type within trusted environments, with a big-endian byte layout that preserves chronological ordering in lexicographic UUID string comparisons. The third tier, Secure SKEID, encrypts the entire SKEID using AES-256 symmetric encryption as a single-block pseudorandom permutation, producing ciphertext indistinguishable from random bytes while remaining compatible with standard UUID data-type parsers in string representation. Deterministic bidirectional transformations connect all three tiers.