DATEX Specification

Appearance

Important Notice:

This is a Working Draft of the DATEX Specification. This is document is work in progress and may change at any time. It is not intended to be used for production purposes.

13 Endpoints ​

13.1 Endpoints and endpoint instances ​

A network participant is called an endpoint. Endpoints are uniquely identified by a 20 byte address (Endpoint ID). An endpoint can have multiple instances. All instances of an endpoint have the same 12(16) byte base address, followed by a 8(4) byte instance identifier.

In the following, the term "endpoint instance" refers to a specific endpoint participating in the network. The term "endpoint" refers to the virtual entity that holds all endpoint instances (which can also just be a single instance).

13.2 Cryptographic Keys ​

An endpoint needs to generate two key pairs:

  • Encryption key pair:
    • RSA-OAEP
    • modulus length: 4096
    • public exponent: 65537
    • hash: SHA-256
  • Signing key pair:
    • ECDSA
    • elliptic curve: P-384

Those key pairs are the same for all instances of the endpoint.

13.3 Registering an endpoint ​

An endpoint instance can announce itself by sending a HELLO broadcast message containing the public encryption and signing keys.

...

A non-temporary endpoint should put a permanent record in the blockchain, containing the Endpoint ID and the public keys (See BLOCKCHAIN RECORDS)

13.4 Verified and named endpoints ​

Individuals and institutions can verify with a trusted authority to get a custom name (alias) linked to a particular endpoint. Each individual or institution can get exactly one alias. A endpoint cannot be referenced by multiple aliases. The references are stored in the blockchain and signed by the referenced endpoint and the trusted authority.

13.5 Address syntax ​

Syntax for aliases:

datex
@person
@+institution

Syntax for IDs:

datex
@@00E6736E427C7D65D2AC0000

Endpoint instances:

datex
@@00E6736E427C7D65D2AC0000/143
@person/mobile1
@person/mobile2
@person/* # targets all instances
@+institution/be334e

If no instance is specified, the routing network decides which endpoint instance is targeted.

13.6 Broadcasts ​

The special @* address resolves to @@FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF and represents a broadcast address targeting all endpoints.

13.7 Anonymous endpoint ID ​

TODO: explain generation of endpoint ID