The six primitives KYE™ ships.
KYE Protocol™ is built on six primitives. Each is a real protocol object — a schema, an endpoint, an example payload, a decision role, an audit event — not an explanatory abstraction. Click any card to jump straight to its definition + schema + endpoint + open-banking flow.
Together they answer six questions.
Identity — who or what is acting? On-Behalf-Of — on whose behalf? Authority — under what authority? Scope — within what scope? State — in what state? Audit — with what proof?
Combined, they produce Authority Finality™: a replayable, signed answer to all six questions for every action a human, service or AI agent takes.
Identity — one URN, every actor.
Definition. A KYE™ identity is a single durable URN that uniquely names any actor — human, service, AI agent, model, tool, workflow, business — and binds it to a public key. URN format: kye:<class>:<trust-domain>:<subclass>:<local>. Identifiers persist across rebuilds, redeployments, and tool invocations.
Open-banking example.
kye:human:acme.eu:psu:alice-meier— payment-service user (account holder).kye:business:acme.eu:corp:acme-treasury-gmbh— corporate account holder.kye:agent:fintech-x.eu:tpp:ai-finance-bot— the TPP’s AI finance agent.kye:service:bank-z.eu:aspsp:rail-gateway— the bank’s ASPSP rail.
On-Behalf-Of — the layer most stacks omit.
Definition. A signed delegation chain that binds every action back to a human or business who is legally on the hook. Each link carries a parent_delegation_id, a scope (which must attenuate the parent’s — never exceed it), and a signature from the delegator. The chain is the answer to “who authorised this?” in seconds, not a Slack thread.
Why it matters. Modern systems do not just authenticate users. They delegate authority across humans, companies, agents, APIs, wallets, workflows, and payment rails. KYE™ makes acting on behalf of explicit, scoped, state-aware, revocable, and auditable. This is the layer OAuth, OIDC, and SPIFFE leave to ad-hoc app code.
Open-banking flow:
- Account holder grants the TPP a delegation: “initiate payments on my behalf, ≤ €1,000 single, ≤ €10,000 monthly.”
- TPP sub-delegates an attenuated scope to its AI finance agent: “EUR only, EU corridors, prepare-and-stage; final submit requires human approval > €500.”
- AI agent prepares a payment. The KYE™ ePDP walks: agent → TPP → account holder. Every link is signed; every scope attenuates. The bank receives a payment intent with the full chain attached.
- ASPSP verifies the chain offline using public keys; pays the rail or denies with a reason code.
Scope — parameter-level, attenuable.
Definition. Scope is the parameter-level constraint set on an authority. Not a single “can transact” flag — structured fields: amount.max, currency.allowlist, corridor.allowlist, beneficiary.first_time, time_window, approval.threshold. Attenuation invariant: a child’s scope MUST be a subset of its parent’s. Enforced by the protocol, not the policy bundle.
Open-banking example.
- Holder grants TPP scope
{amount.max: 1000, currency: ["EUR"], corridor: ["SEPA"]}. - TPP attenuates for the AI agent to
{amount.max: 500, currency: ["EUR"], beneficiary.first_time: false}. Protocol verifies the child is a subset; rejects any agent grant claiming €2,000 (would exceed parent).
State — six dimensions, point-in-time replayable.
Definition. Every KYE™ entity carries six state dimensions, each independently versioned: lifecycle (created/active/quarantined/tombstoned), authority (granted/exercised/revoked), delegation (issued/expired), credential (valid/rotated/revoked), recovery (normal/break-glass/restored), risk (telemetry-derived posture). The runtime evaluates state at the moment of decision — auditors replay the same point-in-time state offline.
Open-banking example.
- At T+0, account holder revokes consent. State transitions:
authority.revokedon the TPP grant, cascade fires. - At T+0:00.5, AI agent attempts a payment. PDP evaluates state at T+0:00.5 —
deny: authority_revoked. The decision is replayable: at T+30 days an auditor evaluates state “as of” T+0:00.5 and gets the same answer.
Audit — signed evidence, public-key verifiable.
Definition. An append-only, hash-linked audit chain. Every authorise call, every state transition, every signal cascade emits a signed audit event. Bundles project to Evidence Packs — the artefact a regulator, court, auditor, or dispute panel verifies offline using public keys alone. No read-access to your runtime required.
Open-banking example.
- Every TPP→AI→ASPSP transaction emits the full chain to the audit log: consent granted, scope attenuated, payment intent, decision, rail confirmation, settlement.
- 30 days later, a complainant disputes the €420 payment. The bank pulls the Evidence Pack; the regulator verifies the chain with the public keys it already holds for each party. No spreadsheets, no SQL.