Hardware-Anchor Embodiment of the Continuity-Identity Processor

Mechanism

The continuity-identity processor is the device-side computational element of a memory-native identity substrate. It does not store a static credential and it does not hold a persistent keypair. Instead, a device or agent expresses its identity as a trust slope: the cumulatively validated sequence of dynamic hashes formed by successive, verifiable identity mutations. A device maintains a Dynamic Device Hash (DDH) and a hosted agent maintains a Dynamic Agent Hash (DAH), each an ephemeral, memory-resolved cryptographic identifier generated as a successor of a prior trusted value. The processor's role is to advance, present, and validate these values, so that identity is something the device continuously computes rather than something it stores and reveals.

Each step on the slope is computed from the immediately prior step and a source of non-exported unpredictability. The update rule concatenates the prior hash with a fresh entropy input, a volatile salt, and a domain-separating tag, then hashes the result to yield the next step. In one example the update is computed as H(DAH_prev concatenated with Ext(X), the salt, and a tag), where X is derived from a local state vector; alternatively it is computed as H(DAH_prev concatenated with KDF(HWID, salt) and a tag) using a hardware anchor. Because each successor binds to its predecessor and to unpredictability that never leaves the device, a party lacking the device's local state or volatile salt cannot feasibly synthesize valid successors. This is the structural property that makes the slope, rather than a stored secret, the thing an attacker would have to forge.

The processor draws its per-step unpredictability from one of two disclosed sources, or from a hybrid of both. In the hardware-anchor embodiment, a static hardware identifier such as a TPM, TEE, or SoC identifier is combined with a volatile, non-repeating salt to yield a keyed per-epoch contribution. In the local-state embodiment, locally observable signals are collected into a local state vector, projected and binarized, and processed by a strong extractor into a bounded pseudorandom token. Either source alone, or both concatenated in the same update step, produces a successor bound to time, context, and prior state. The hybrid accommodates constrained devices that expose only a hardware identifier alongside richer platforms that can derive robust local state.

The Local State Vector and Stability-Tuned Extraction

In the local-state embodiment, the local state vector consists of device-observable signals sampled within an epoch. The disclosed signals include monotonic counters, high-resolution timing deltas, CPU performance counters, scheduler jitter statistics, I/O inter-arrival micro-jitter, sensor noise, rolling process histograms, and short-horizon sketches of recent dynamic hashes. The processor turns this vector into the token X through a defined feature map: it normalizes and clips, projects to a fixed dimension via signed random projections under a public seed, optionally appends a discrete context code derived from a semantic context vector, and applies a locality-sensitive binarization. The extractor then maps X to a pseudorandom token suitable for the update rule.

The locality-sensitive binarization is what makes the local-state slope usable for continuity. It is tuned so that small fluctuations in the local state yield stable X values while a genuine role or zone change flips a controlled subset of bits. This is the inverse of a conventional cryptographic hash, which is designed so that any input perturbation diverges the output maximally. Here, benign sample-to-sample variation must not break continuity, while a substantive context change must register. The continuity test at a receiver therefore becomes a stability-tuned neighborhood comparison over extractor outputs rather than an exact-match comparison. The extractor output, not the raw state, is what may be disclosed in a bounded proof, so the underlying local state is never exposed.

Two-Stage Authentication and Stateless Encryption

The processor binds identity at both the transport layer and the semantic layer of every message. A sender derives a symmetric encryption key from the recipient's current dynamic identity, a recipient DAH or recipient DDH, by applying a key-derivation function to that identity together with a domain-separating context. No asymmetric key exchange is performed and the message does not carry the key. The sender performs authenticated encryption over the payload, places its current dynamic hash in the transport header for fast stateless screening, and embeds a copy of its current sender DAH inside the ciphertext to bind semantics to transport.

On receipt, the processor validates in two stages. First, the header DAH is checked against the last trusted successor stored locally, using a lightweight continuity test, before any decryption is attempted. This discards malformed or off-slope traffic early. If header continuity holds, the recipient derives a decryption key from its own current identity and decrypts the payload; successful decryption demonstrates the payload was generated for the recipient's correct memory-resolved identity at the time of transmission. Second, the recipient extracts the embedded sender DAH from the plaintext and validates it as the expected successor on the sender's trust slope under policy-bounded continuity rules. The message is accepted only upon successful validation of both the header DAH and the embedded DAH. Failure at either stage causes rejection without any external registry lookup, and the recipient may record the rejection, degrade the sender's trust score, or quarantine the sender per local policy.

This makes operation fully stateless. Neither party maintains a long-lived session key; every symmetric key is derived transiently from dynamic identity values. When identity comes from a local state vector, stability-tuned projections and error-tolerant sketches keep benign measurement fluctuations from causing spurious decryption failures, while a substantive role or context change intentionally alters the recipient identity and forces rekeying. When identity comes from a hardware anchor, freshness is maintained by the non-repeating salt. Where a sender lacks the recipient's most recent identity, it may derive from the most recently trusted recipient anchor and, on decryption failure, fall back to a short challenge-response rekey scoped to the recipient's current epoch or a checkpoint request, retrying within a policy-bounded attempt window.

Slope Validation and Resistance to Spoofing and Replay

When a presented identity arrives, the processor reconstructs the expected successor neighborhood from its last trusted value and checks whether the presented value lies within the allowed successor set under policy-bounded continuity rules. In local-state embodiments this is a stability-tuned acceptance radius over extractor outputs; the receiver may validate a short distance sketch supplied with the claim to confirm the extractor output falls within a policy-acceptable neighborhood without exposing underlying local state. In hardware-anchor embodiments the processor verifies that the volatile salt is fresh relative to past observations and expected temporal cadence. In hybrid embodiments both checks must hold. Claims that satisfy continuity are classified as on-slope; those that do not are treated as probable spoofed or forged identities.

Replay resistance is achieved by binding acceptance to monotonic advancement along the slope and forbidding reuse of previously accepted successors within a policy horizon. A presented identity that matches a previously accepted value for the same sender and context, or that regresses behind the last trusted state, is rejected as a replay or regression attempt. Policy may further require advancement of a local epoch counter or enforce minimum inter-step intervals. Failure outcomes are recorded with explicit reasons such as continuity violation, sketch or neighborhood mismatch, stale salt, cadence anomaly, or replay detection, and the determination drives the policy response. Because acceptance depends on the trust-slope lineage and local policy, no external authentication service is consulted.

Substrate Entanglement of Hosted Mutations

The processor couples the identity evolution of agents it hosts to its own device identity. When a semantic agent carrying a prior DAH is admitted to the host's execution context and then initiates a mutation, such as a role change, delegation, policy commit, or semantic state transition, the host computes a mutation class indicator and derives a host mutation token bound to its current DDH. The token may be computed as a hash of the DDH, the mutation class, and an epoch identifier. The agent's successor DAH is then computed as a hash of its prior DAH, the host mutation token, an optional agent-side extractor output, a volatile per-epoch agent salt, and a domain-separating tag.

The host records an entanglement trace containing the prior agent identity, the host's current device identity, the mutation token, the resulting successor identity, and the mutation class, then signs the entry or authenticates it with a MAC derived from the host's DDH. The agent appends the entry to its memory field and folds it into a cumulative chain hash so that omission, modification, or reordering of any entry diverges the terminal value. A validator accepts the successor only if the entanglement trace opens to the host's DDH under policy and the successor is a valid derivation from the prior identity. Because the host's device identity is itself derived from non-exported unpredictability, a party lacking the host's entropy inputs cannot synthesize a valid mutation token or forge an acceptable entanglement entry. This prevents off-substrate mutation and ties every agent identity transition to a trusted, policy-validated device identity. Agents that execute across multiple hosts accumulate a sequence of such entries, forming a multi-node provenance path that supports distributed audit without external registries.

Anchor Rotation, Delayed Validation, and Recovery

The processor maintains the long-term health of its slope through rotation, delayed validation, and recovery, all without persistent credentials. A slope health monitor watches staleness indicators such as elapsed-epoch limits, drift or cadence anomalies, entropy-reuse heuristics, or compromise signals. When policy thresholds are met, the processor reseeds: it generates a new entropy anchor, derives a new initial identity under the same update rule with a versioned domain separator, and records a forward link that cryptographically binds the terminal value of the prior epoch to the new initial identity. Downstream verifiers reconcile pre-rotation and post-rotation slopes through that forward link using only local policy and bounded proofs. Certain embodiments allow optional biometric-assisted reseeding, in which a biometric sample is passed through a privacy-preserving fuzzy extractor with optional liveness verification to yield a bounded seed that augments the anchor; the seed is never stored or exported in raw form.

For high-latency or intermittently connected operation, a sender includes a bounded set of mutation proofs that compactly represent slope evolution since a previously trusted anchor. A verifier replays the missing steps by iteratively applying the update rule with the disclosed per-step materials, starting from its last trusted value, until it reaches the presented identity; validation succeeds when the recomputed chain opens to the referenced anchor or checkpoint. If stored state is too sparse, the verifier issues a bounded checkpoint request. After memory loss, a quorum-based recovery path lets a device or agent rejoin the trust graph: it reseeds an identity, requests attestations from previously trusted peers, and aggregates them under a quorum policy into a recovery token that re-anchors the slope and is recorded into lineage for downstream audit. Predictive verification may forecast near-term successors and acceptance envelopes from cadence statistics and role-transition models, surfacing behavioral drift before full discontinuity occurs.

Prior-Art Distinction

Conventional digital identity relies on persistent public-private keypairs and signature-based validation, requiring centralized trust anchors, global registries, and long-lived key material. That model is exposed to key compromise, metadata correlation, certificate-revocation failure, and quantum cryptographic attack, and it is impractical in ephemeral or cognition-native systems where maintaining static credentials is infeasible. The processor here holds no persistent secret. Each DAH or DDH is ephemeral, non-reusable, and meaningful only as part of a monotonic sequence anchored in a previously trusted state, so observing a dynamic identity yields no ability to generate successors.

The distinction is that this processor holds no persistent private key and does not depend on centralized trust anchors, global registries, or long-lived key material. It advances an identity along a slope from non-exported unpredictability and validates presented successors against retained prior state under policy. Resistance to quantum attack follows from avoiding hardness assumptions vulnerable to Shor's algorithm: security reduces to the min-entropy of per-step unpredictability and the preimage resistance of the employed hashes and extractors rather than on a hardness assumption an algebraic quantum algorithm can break. Where interoperability with legacy PKI is required, a segregated adapter generates session-scoped fallback identifiers that are kept inside an isolation boundary and never incorporated into DAH or DDH evolution, so legacy bridging cannot pollute the slope.

Disclosure Scope

The continuity-identity processor, comprising the device-side computation of a Dynamic Device Hash and the hosting of agent Dynamic Agent Hashes as a verifiable trust slope, the update rule that advances each successor from the prior value and a non-exported unpredictability contribution with a volatile salt and domain-separating tag, the hardware-anchor and local-state embodiments and their hybrid, the stability-tuned locality-sensitive extraction over the local state vector, two-stage authentication with stateless identity-derived symmetric encryption, on-slope continuity and replay validation, substrate entanglement of hosted mutations through host mutation tokens and signed entanglement traces, and anchor rotation, delayed validation, and quorum-based recovery, is disclosed in United States Patent Application 19/388,580. This article describes that disclosed mechanism using its own terminology.

The scope is independent of the specific unpredictability source, the specific hash or extractor family, and the specific host platform, provided identity is validated as monotonic progression along a trust slope formed from local unpredictability and semantic context rather than from persistent keys, centralized authorities, or synchronized registries.