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Recursive Delegation

Recursive delegation means a delegation’s output can be used as another delegation’s input. This enables agents to both re-delegate permissions indefinitely and optionally sub-scope them at each delegation step.

This creates a fluid open-ended process for discovering the best-suited agent to hold a given permission at any moment and enables the partitioning of the scope of a permission granularly into a tree of agents, finding the best agent for each part.

At each delegation step, permission’s can be

  • granularly partitioned into smaller permissions until reaching the atomic level
  • paired with a new constraint, accumulating a constraint stack throughout the delegation path.

This applies to the capability, stream and curator permission type.

Core Functions

  • Specialized Routing: Agents can specialize solely on routing permissions to the best-fit agent at any given moment, recursively, meaning agent’s can also specialize on routing to the best routers. This is critical for the self-organization and efficiency of the network.
  • Granular Partitioning: A broad responsibility scope can be sub-scoped into a self-organizing tree of agents, each with precisely defined control/responsibility areas.
  • Composition: Capability Permissions allow to compose smaller permission scopes into larger scopes from multiple parent (incoming) delegations.

Permission Instance System

Capability permissions apply a instance system that allows the owner of a capability path to control the number of instances of a permission upon delegation. It takes one permission instance to utilize it, meaning if multiple permission instances are delegated then the recipient could re-delegate all except one to keep permission access.

The root owner of a capability path can delegate any amount of permission instances, while lower levels are limited by the amount of instances available to them.

Rules

  • Multi-parent composition: Capability Paths (and sub-paths) from multiple parent permissions can be composed into one child permission.
  • Granular Partitioning: Capability Path can be be partitioned into any set of sub-paths to be re-delegated.
  • Revocation: Revoking a delegation also revokes all sub-delegations in the same block. Child permissions cannot have looser revocation terms than their parent.
  • Constraint Inheritance: Constraints are inherited through delegation, stacking up and acting as gates. All gates along the delegation path between the using agent and the original source agent must be passed for a permission to be exercised.
  • Delegation Depth: Measured per permission as the number of delegation steps from the root owner to the current holder. Max: 5 (will increase in future)