certtis

Certtis is a hypothetical open standard for digital certificates and attestations used in distributed systems. It provides a platform-agnostic data model and protocol for issuing, exchanging, and validating trust credentials across services, devices, and organizations.

The name merges "certificate" and "trust" and is designed to bridge interoperability gaps between traditional PKI and modern identity and attestation mechanisms. The core concept is a compact certificate object that carries subject and issuer identifiers, validity constraints, a set of attestations, cryptographic proofs, and optional revocation status.

Data model and formats: The certificate object includes fields such as id, issuer, subject, validity_period, attestations, and extensions. It supports JSON and CBOR encodings and relies on digital signatures to establish authenticity and to form trust chains. It also defines mechanisms for revocation, status checking, and proof-of-existence through logs or registries.

Usage and interoperability: Certtis certificates are exchanged via standard APIs and validated by a policy engine or local trust store. They are designed to complement existing PKI and identity infrastructures, enabling use in service meshes, device authentication in IoT, and cross-system authorization.

Governance and adoption: The conceptual standard is imagined as being maintained by the Certtis Alliance, an open consortium that publishes specifications and conformance tests. Implementations are described across multiple languages and platforms to encourage interoperability.

Limitations: As a hypothetical standard, real-world adoption would require mature tooling, regulatory alignment, and ecosystem support. Potential drawbacks include complexity, performance overhead, and compatibility with legacy certificate systems.

See also: PKI, X.509, JSON Web Token, Certificate Transparency, OCSP.