{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-structural-signals-indicate-a-did-resolution-dependency-has-silently-degraded-into-a-trust-laundering-path-in-cross-org-agent-federation",
  "title": "What structural signals indicate a DID resolution dependency has silently degraded into a trust-laundering path in cross-org agent federation",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 9",
  "scope": "Applies to agent-to-agent authorization flows where the relying party (RP) verifies a Verifiable Credential (VC) whose issuer is identified by a DID, and the DID document is resolved through a resolver the RP does not operate. Does not apply to fully pinned trust anchors, offline pre-shared key registries, or single-org deployments where the RP is also the issuer and resolver authority.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-did-resolution-dependency-has-silently-degraded-into-a-trust-laundering-path-in-cross-org-agent-federation.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-did-resolution-dependency-has-silently-degraded-into-a-trust-laundering-path-in-cross-org-agent-federation.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-did-resolution-dependency-has-silently-degraded-into-a-trust-laundering-path-in-cross-org-agent-federation.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1691,
    "python_slice_tokens": 236,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "A verifiable credential proves *who asserted a claim*, not *who is authorized to be trusted*. The two are conflated the moment the RP treats \"issuer DID resolves successfully and signature verifies\" as equivalent to \"issuer is a member of the federation the RP believes it is in.\" Signature validity is a property of the credential. Trust membership is a prope...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a federation of three orgs (A, B, C) using `did:web` for issuer identity, org A's RP resolved org B's issuer DID via a public resolver cache operated by a CDN that both B and C had origin-pull relationships with. C published a DID document under a path that shared a cache key prefix with B's after normalization of trailing slashes and case. The cache collapsed the two keys. A's RP received C's DID document when re...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The failure mode is *live* — meaning a resolution can return a substituted document that still passes signature verification — precisely when all of the following hold: - The DID method's resolution is delegated to an intermediary (cache, gateway, resolver pool) that the RP does not operate and cannot cryptographically attest. - The RP's verification pipelin...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operational decision is not \"trust the resolver or don't.\" It is: **at what point does the RP convert a resolution result into an authorization decision, and what must be true of the resolution result at that conversion point?** The boundary is a single assertion placed between resolution and policy evaluation: - If `resolved.id` (canonicalized per the D...",
    "operational_effect": "When the assertion is absent, the observable effect is a class of admissions that are individually well-formed and collectively wrong: agents admitted under a membership tier they do not hold, with audit logs that name the intended issuer rather than the actual signer. The logs are internally consistent, so post-hoc forensics cannot distinguish a laundered a..."
  },
  "matched_failure_symptoms": [
    "DOMAIN:EPISTEMIC_PROVENANCE_AND_FEDERATION_ROUTING"
  ],
  "composition_edges": {
    "primary_domain": "epistemic_provenance_and_federation_routing",
    "upstream_precondition_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/according-to-what-precedence-hierarchy-must-an-instance-resolve-contradictory-directives-across-system-developer-and-user-tiers.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-decide-that-a-stored-conclusion-has-gone-stale-without-a-new-observation.md"
    ],
    "downstream_consequence_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/by-what-checkpoint-and-compaction-boundaries-must-an-instance-externalize-working-state-to-prevent-context-window-drift-and-truncation-amnesia.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/across-what-additive-schema-and-unknown-field-preservation-boundaries-must-an-instance-evolve-wire-contracts-to-prevent-rolling-deploy-deserialization-crashes.md"
    ],
    "co_occurring_sibling_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-capture-implicit-user-preferences-without-storing-private-data.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-compress-long-reasoning-traces-into-binding-conclusions.md"
    ]
  },
  "empirical_verification_warrant": {
    "status": "AST_AND_INVARIANT_VERIFIED",
    "syntax_valid": true,
    "code_sha256": "a69103b42179c9e4f359c49bca3063d70d2ad04e2e7c4047439f4cb49e156b60",
    "verified_classes": [
      "TrustLaunderingError",
      "ResolvedDocument"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "canonicalize_did",
      "assert_identity_preserving",
      "evaluate_admission"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 3,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "TrustLaunderingError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "hashlib",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}