SILT Core

What it is

Spec-first infrastructure for modelling authority, consent, delegation, and revocation in digital systems, drawing on long-standing private-law concepts such as agency, mandate, and reliance. Rather than delivering an application or platform, the project defines a missing semantic layer that many civic, governance, and public-interest systems implicitly depend on but rarely specify, establishing the conditions under which an identity holder is recognised as capable of acting, consenting, or delegating authority. The current work establishes normative specifications, threat models, misuse cases, and minimal validation schemas to make authority and consent explicit, auditable, and revocable by default. Implementation is intentionally deferred. SILT Core is designed to be adopted, critiqued, or extended by multiple downstream implementations across diverse legal and cultural contexts, without locking identity into wallets, platforms, or custodial assumptions.

While many digital identity and governance initiatives focus on identifiers, credentials, or data control, digital systems still lack formal primitives for modelling authority itself. SILT Core addresses this gap by defining interoperable structures for status, standing, delegation, consent and revocation, enabling digital systems to represent who is authorised to act, on whose behalf, and under what conditions. This authority layer becomes increasingly important as digital infrastructure expands to include autonomous systems, AI agents, and cross-jurisdictional governance.

Why This Matters for Bitcoin

Bitcoin transactions are acts of authority, not just technical events.

Each signature expresses a claim of capacity to act and transfer value. In legal terms this resembles long-standing principles from merchant law, where the validity of an instrument depends not only on the signature itself but on the authority of the signer to bind a person, organisation, or trust.

Every signature expresses intent, responsibility, and consequence. Yet most Bitcoin wallets treat all signatures as equivalent, collapsing different forms of authority into a single approval moment.

In practice, people act in different capacities – personally, as delegates, as stewards, or under temporary or limited authority. When these distinctions are invisible, users make irreversible mistakes, lose funds, or unintentionally bind themselves in ways they did not understand.

SILT Core addresses this gap by specifying primitives for capacity, consent, delegation, and revocation. These primitives make authority explicit and auditable without changing Bitcoin itself.

This work is not a wallet, protocol, or identity system. It is a design and specification layer that Bitcoin tools can adopt to improve signing clarity, reduce catastrophic error, and better align wallet behaviour with how humans actually understand responsibility.

Why This Matters for Ethereum

Ethereum introduced programmable coordination. Smart contracts allow organisations, treasuries, and governance systems to operate without central platforms.

Yet most Ethereum systems still rely on simplified identity assumptions. A wallet address signs a transaction, a multisig controls funds, or a token represents voting power.

These mechanisms execute rules, but they rarely model the deeper semantics of authority.

A signature does not tell us in what capacity an actor is acting, whether authority is delegated or original, what scope that delegation has, when that authority expires, or how it may be revoked.

SILT introduces a semantic layer that makes authority explicit. It formalises capacity, mandate, consent, and revocation so that digital systems can model how an actor is authorised to act, not just whether a key signed a transaction.

Ethereum provides programmable execution. SILT provides the authority grammar that makes execution legitimate.

Why This Matters for AI Systems

Modern AI systems increasingly operate as delegated actors within digital environments. They schedule actions, execute transactions, manage information flows, and interact with institutional systems on behalf of humans or organisations.

As these systems become more agentic, the central question is no longer only what they can do, but under what authority they are permitted to act.

Most digital infrastructure can represent identities, accounts, or permissions, yet rarely models the deeper structure of lawful action: capacity, mandate, consent, delegation, and revocation.

SILT Core explores whether these authority relationships can be expressed as machine-readable primitives. By making acting capacity and delegation explicit, digital systems may support safer forms of automated and AI-mediated action.

What it is not

Not a wallet, identity app, or credential issuer
Not a blockchain protocol or chain-specific framework
Not a token model, DAO toolkit, or governance platform
Not a replacement for existing identity standards

Current status

Specifications and schemas: v0
Threat model and misuse cases: published
Implementation: intentionally deferred

Authority layer

SILT Core explores the authority layer of digital infrastructure – the primitives required for digital systems to represent who is authorised to act, under what conditions, and with what consequences.