KERI.host

Reference-grade infrastructure for KERI-native economies.

KERI.host is an open, forkable reference implementation for building communities and governance structures on cryptographic accountability. It is not a SaaS provider, wallet company, or workflow engine. It is a pattern library — infrastructure that gets out of the way.

What This Is

• A reference implementation of KERI witness services on serverless infrastructure (AWS Lambda + DynamoDB)
• Forkable and self-hostable — if KERI.host disappears, nothing breaks
• Optional hosting — every component can be run independently without KERI.host infrastructure
• Infrastructure for community builders, not just developers

What This Is Not

• Not an identity provider
• Not a platform monopoly
• Not a global reputation system
• Not a gatekeeper to participation
• Cannot revoke or invalidate anyone's AID
• Cannot be a root authority for credentials

Architecture

The infrastructure is organized into three AWS CDK stacks:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                         CDK App                                 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                              │
        ┌─────────────────────┼─────────────────────┐
        ▼                     ▼                     ▼
┌───────────────┐    ┌───────────────┐    ┌───────────────┐
│  DataStack    │    │   ApiStack    │    │ WitnessStack  │
│               │    │               │    │               │
│ • DynamoDB    │◄───│ • API Gateway │◄───│ • Lambdas     │
│ • Secrets     │    │ • Certificate │    │ • Routes      │
│               │    │ • DNS         │    │ • EventBridge │
└───────────────┘    └───────────────┘    └───────────────┘
     (Layer 1)           (Layer 2)           (Layer 3)

DataStack — Persistent storage (DynamoDB tables for KEL, states, receipts, escrows)

ApiStack — Shared API infrastructure (API Gateway, ACM certificate, Route53)

WitnessStack — KERI witness service (Rust Lambda functions, API routes)

API Endpoints

Endpoint	Method	Description
/witness	GET	Witness OOBI
/witness/introduce	GET	Get witness OOBI
/witness/process	POST	Submit KERI events
/witness/query	POST	Query KEL, state, receipts
/witness/oobi/{id}	GET	Resolve OOBI for identifier

Development

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.88+
• Node.js (LTS)
• AWS CLI configured
• cargo-lambda
• pandoc — HTML to Markdown conversion (brew install pandoc)
• Python 3.10+ — PDF to Markdown conversion via pymupdf4llm

Build

# Build Rust lambdas
cargo build --release

# Build CDK infrastructure
cd infrastructure
npm install
npm run build

Deploy

cd infrastructure

# Deploy all stacks
npx cdk deploy --all -c hostedZoneId=YOUR_HOSTED_ZONE_ID

# Or deploy individually
npx cdk deploy KerihostDataStack
npx cdk deploy KerihostApiStack -c hostedZoneId=YOUR_HOSTED_ZONE_ID
npx cdk deploy KerihostWitnessStack

Test

# Run integration tests
cd tests/integration
npm install
npm test

Vision

See docs/keri-host-artifact-plan.md for the full KERI.host vision and roadmap.

Core Principles

1. Reference > Platform — Forkable, self-hostable, documented as patterns
2. Optional Hosting, Never Required — Every demo runnable without KERI.host
3. Simulated but Real — Flight simulators, not PowerPoints
4. Subjective, Plural Reputation — No universal score
5. Regulator-Friendly — Audit trails without surveillance
6. Cooperation, Not Competition — Non-profit, no ecosystem wars

License

Apache License 2.0 — See LICENSE

Contributing

Contributions welcome. This is reference infrastructure meant to be forked, adapted, and improved by the community.