# Inventor of KERI and author of the ACDC specification

Source: https://startwithidentity.com/experts/sam-smith/
Last updated: 2026-09-20
License: content by Start with Identity. Cite the source URL.

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## Bio

Samuel M. Smith invented KERI, Key Event Receipt Infrastructure, and authored the IETF draft for Authentic Chained Data Containers. KERI is an open-source project at the Decentralized Identity Foundation and underpins the vLEI credential scheme used for legal-entity identity.

Profile built from public academic, IETF, and project records.

## Where their work shows up

Most [decentralized identifier](https://startwithidentity.com/standards/decentralized-identifiers-did/) methods anchor to a ledger, which means the identifier's security depends on that ledger continuing to exist and behave. KERI's argument is that it does not need one: a key event log, witnessed and duplicity-detectable, is sufficient to prove control of an identifier over time, including through key rotation. Whether that holds is one of the live technical arguments in the field. See [what is self-sovereign identity](https://startwithidentity.com/guides/fundamentals/what-is-self-sovereign-identity/) and [verifiable credentials](https://startwithidentity.com/standards/verifiable-credentials/).