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Dataerai gives each asset, dataset, person, and project a DID (decentralized identifier): a citable, persistent name that anyone can resolve and verify cryptographically. It proves who created a thing, when, and that its metadata and content have not changed since a given moment — without anyone having to trust your word for it. A DID is minted automatically the moment a record is created — you don’t request one. Every asset has a DID from the start; datasets, people, and projects get one too. The DID sits beside the asset’s internal ID. The internal ID is an opaque key that never leaves the system; the DID is the identifier you cite, share, and verify.

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What a DID looks like

A DID is a short, self-describing string:
The last segment is a one-way identifier — it is derived from the record so the DID is stable and unique, but it never reveals the internal ID. On non-production deployments the DID carries an extra environment segment after the method — for example did:dataerai:beta:asset:… — so a DID from a test environment is visibly and cryptographically distinct from a production one.

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Two identifiers, two jobs

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Where you see it

Open any asset and find the DID row in the General tab of the record sidebar. Hover over the row to reveal a copy button — to drop the DID into a citation or an API call — and a View DID document button. View DID document opens the identity’s did:web document in a modal: for a published DID it shows the live document with its keys, status, and a Verified badge, plus an Open did.json link to the canonical web document; for a private one you (and anyone it’s shared with) get a preview of the same document, marked “Preview · not published yet.” You can copy the document’s JSON straight from the modal.
An asset's General tab showing its DID

Every asset gets a DID, shown on its General tab with copy and View DID document controls.

The DID document modal in preview

The View DID document modal shows the document a record will publish — here as a preview, before publishing.

Dataset, person, and project identities use the same DID model. They appear wherever that record is shown — a dataset or person on its profile, and a project on the Overview of its sidebar — and resolve and verify exactly like an asset DID. A project’s DID is the citable reference you share for the project, shown in place of its internal ID.

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What makes it verifiable

Every DID is signed with an Ed25519 key — Dataerai is the trust root — and each identity event is recorded in a tamper-evident transparency log, in the style of Certificate Transparency. There is no blockchain. That combination means anyone can confirm, offline and without logging in:
  • the record was signed by Dataerai (the signature checks out against the published keys), and
  • the record genuinely appears in the log at the position it claims (an inclusion proof against a signed snapshot of the log).
A DID is private by default — a new record has no public surface until you publish it. Verification still works the moment a record exists; publishing is what makes the DID citable to the outside world.

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DIDs are durable

A DID doesn’t disappear when a record does. Deleting a record tombstones its DID — it still resolves, now marked as tombstoned — so existing citations don’t break. When two person records are merged, the merged-away DID is superseded and points to the surviving one. See Publish & cite for the detail.

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Next steps

Resolve & verify

Resolve a DID and check its signature and inclusion proof.

Publish & cite

Make a DID public, get its did:web document, and cite it.