NUID: Identity as a Living Constellation
Why digital identity should be a weighted graph that evolves with you, not a static credential that someone else controls. A new DID method for the age of AI agents.
Your passport does not define you. Neither does your email address, your social security number, or your login credentials. These are fragments. Static snapshots of one aspect of who you are, frozen at the moment they were issued.
Your real identity is dynamic. You gain qualifications, change employers, move countries, build relationships, lose relationships, develop expertise, change your mind. Your identity is a constellation of weighted connections that shifts over time.
Digital identity should work the same way. It does not. Here is what we are building instead.
What is wrong with current digital identity
The dominant model for digital identity is the account. A platform creates a record for you. That record lives on their servers. You authenticate with a password or biometric. The platform decides what your identity means, what you can do with it, and what happens when you leave.
Decentralised identity (SSI, DIDs, verifiable credentials) improves on this by removing the central authority. You control your own identifier. Credentials are issued by third parties and held in your wallet. You present what you choose.
This is better. But it still treats identity as a collection of static credentials. A credential says “this person graduated from Oxford in 2024.” It does not say how that credential relates to everything else about you, how its relevance changes over time, or how it should be interpreted across different contexts.
Identity is not a filing cabinet of credentials. It is a living system.
The constellation model
NUID (NOEVA Universal Identifier) is a W3C DID method that models identity as a weighted graph: a constellation.
did:nuid:uk:person:2026:abc123def456The identifier encodes four things: jurisdiction (uk), entity type (person), temporal epoch (2026), and a unique cryptographic anchor. But the identifier is just the anchor point. The constellation is the structure around it.
Nodes are attestations
Every attestation, credential, relationship, or capability is a node in your constellation. Your university degree, your employer verification, your age proof, your mesh network identity, your consent preferences: each is a weighted node, issued by a different authority.
Constellation {
anchor: did:nuid:uk:person:2026:abc123
nodes: [
{ type: "education", issuer: "oxford.ac.uk", weight: 0.95, issued: 2024 },
{ type: "employment", issuer: "acme.com", weight: 0.88, issued: 2025 },
{ type: "age-proof", issuer: "gov.uk", weight: 0.99, issued: 2026 },
{ type: "mesh-identity", issuer: "self", weight: 1.0, issued: 2026 },
{ type: "consent-profile", issuer: "self", weight: 1.0, issued: 2026 }
]
}Weights decay over time
A credential from last week carries more weight than one from five years ago. This is not arbitrary: it reflects reality. Your employer from 2019 is less relevant to your current identity than your employer from 2025. The protocol reflects this through temporal decay functions.
The decay rate varies by attestation type. An age proof decays slowly (you do not get younger). An employment credential decays faster (job changes are common). A consent preference has no decay (it represents your current will, updated by you).
Context-dependent disclosure
When you apply for a job, your constellation presents employment-relevant nodes: education, past employers, relevant skills. When you cross a border, it presents jurisdiction-relevant nodes: citizenship, visa status, age proof. When you join a mesh network, it presents network-relevant nodes: device capabilities, trust level, consent profile.
You control which parts of your constellation are visible in each context. This is not “selective disclosure” bolted onto a credential format. It is the fundamental design: your identity has a shape, and you choose which face of that shape to show.
Jurisdictions are embedded
The jurisdiction scope is part of the identifier itself. did:nuid:uk:person carries different regulatory implications from did:nuid:eu:person or did:nuid:self:agent. Any system that encounters a NUID knows immediately which rules apply, without looking anything up.
| Scope | Meaning | Regulatory context |
|---|---|---|
self | Self-controlled | No external jurisdiction |
uk | UK jurisdiction | UK GDPR, Data Protection Act 2018 |
eu | EU jurisdiction | GDPR, AI Act, eIDAS |
global | Cross-jurisdictional | Highest common standard applies |
This matters for AI agents. An agent operating under EU jurisdiction automatically inherits AI Act requirements. An agent with self jurisdiction operates under the individual’s own rules. The protocol enforces this without configuration.
Entity types beyond humans
Digital identity is not just for people. NUID supports six entity types:
- person: Human individuals
- org: Organisations, companies, foundations
- device: Hardware devices, IoT sensors, phones
- service: Software services, APIs, cloud functions
- agent: AI agents, autonomous systems
- collective: Groups, communities, DAOs
An AI agent has a NUID. A mesh radio has a NUID. A community garden has a NUID. Each carries its own constellation of capabilities, constraints, and consent preferences.
This is essential for the age of AI agents. When an agent acts on your behalf, it needs its own identity (so its actions can be attributed and audited) that is linked to yours (so its authority can be verified). The constellation model handles this naturally: your agent’s NUID is a node in your constellation, with a specific weight and scope.
Transport-agnostic identity
Here is where it gets interesting for mesh networking communities.
Your NUID works the same over:
- Internet (full constellation, JSON format, kilobytes of detail)
- Bluetooth (compressed constellation, hundreds of bytes)
- LoRa mesh (micro-credential format, 64 bytes)
- Ultra-constrained mesh (ultra-micro format, 32 bytes)
- NFC (tap-to-verify, physical token)
- Physical media (QR code, USB key, printed backup)
The same cryptographic root anchors your identity across all transports. When you are on broadband, systems see your full constellation. When you are on a LoRa mesh radio, they see a 32-byte proof that links to the same root. When you hand someone an NFC card, they verify the same identity.
This is not theoretical. Patent Family 10 (Sovereign Mesh Identity) includes specific protocol handlers for Meshtastic integration: Bluetooth connection, dedicated NOEVA channel, store-and-forward for offline sync, and gateway bridging when internet is available. Patent Family 86 achieves compression ratios that fit identity assertions into 15-byte LoRa payloads.
Offline-first synchronisation
Identity updates propagate through CRDTs (Conflict-free Replicated Data Types). When you are disconnected, your constellation continues to function locally. When you reconnect, updates merge deterministically without central coordination.
This means mesh communities get real cryptographic identity without depending on internet connectivity. A mesh network of 50 people in a disaster zone has the same identity guarantees as 50 people on broadband.
Consent as part of identity
Your consent preferences are nodes in your constellation, not a separate system. When you set “no tracking, no profiling, data expires after 30 days,” that becomes part of your identity that travels with you.
Any system that encounters your NUID can read your consent nodes and know immediately what is permitted. Not because the system chooses to check, but because the protocol requires it: processing data without a valid consent token is a protocol violation, not a policy choice.
Consent tokens expire. Always. They cannot be made perpetual. If you revoke consent, the revocation propagates to every downstream system that holds a copy of the token. This is enforced cryptographically, not by goodwill.
Content provenance through identity
When you create content, your NUID is the anchor of its provenance chain. When an AI transforms that content (summarises, translates, adapts), the transformation is recorded with the agent’s NUID. The chain is cryptographic: it cannot be forged or stripped.
This means:
- Attribution survives transformation. An AI summary of your article links back to your NUID. When someone shares that summary, your attribution travels with it.
- Consent travels with content. The consent token governing your content is part of the provenance chain. Downstream systems can verify what is permitted.
- Credibility is computable. How many transformations has this content been through? Were they by verified agents? Does the semantic hash still match the original meaning?
How NUID differs from existing DID methods
| Feature | Typical DID | NUID |
|---|---|---|
| Identity model | Static identifier + credential wallet | Weighted graph (constellation) |
| Temporal awareness | Credentials have expiry dates | Weights decay continuously, epoch-scoped |
| Jurisdiction | External, looked up per-context | Embedded in identifier |
| Entity types | Usually human-focused | Six types including agents and collectives |
| Transport | Internet-first | Transport-agnostic (internet to 32-byte mesh) |
| Consent | Separate system | Integrated as constellation nodes |
| Offline | Degraded or broken | Full function via CRDTs |
| AI agents | Not designed for | First-class entity type |
The open pledge
NUID (Family 92) and the mesh identity patents (Families 08-10) are part of NOEVA’s open infrastructure pledge. Any open source implementation is licensed royalty-free under RAND-Z terms.
The specification is designed as a W3C DID method. We intend to submit it to the W3C Decentralized Identifier Working Group. The technical specification is written and available for review.
What we need from the SSI community
We are not claiming to have invented decentralised identity. We are proposing a specific extension: identity as a dynamic weighted graph rather than a static credential store.
If you are building DID implementations, verifiable credential wallets, or identity infrastructure: we would like your feedback. Does the constellation model solve problems you have encountered? Does the transport-agnostic encoding work for your use cases? Does the temporal decay model match how identity actually behaves?
If you are in the Meshtastic, LoRa, or mesh networking community: the mesh identity protocol adds cryptographic identity to your existing network without breaking interoperability. The 32-byte micro-credential fits within LoRa packet constraints. The offline-first design means no internet dependency.
The specs are open. The patents are pledged. Get in touch.
The NOEVA Foundation builds open infrastructure for the humane internet. NUID is one of six open protocols designed for privacy-preserving identity, consent, and AI safety. Read the full specification.
This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.