Seednote

Identity lifecycle

Five registry states, and how an identity moves between them

The registry status of an RID: active, deprecated, superseded, retired, or reserved.

RSM ID Learning Center2 min read

Every RID has an explicit registry lifecycle with five states. Reserved: the identifier is committed and permanently unavailable for reassignment, but the referent's registration or publication is not yet finalized. Active: a registered continuing referent with authoritative identity metadata. Deprecated: a continuing identity discouraged for new references, still valid. Superseded: a distinct authoritative successor referent has been registered, or governed succession is in effect. Retired: the identity is no longer maintained as an active referent.

Restoring a retired or superseded identity to active is not a normal transition: it needs a separately audited exceptional governance procedure and must never happen implicitly. Every transition records its effective timestamp, actor, reason, and authorization in an append-only history. Content revisions, authorization policies, application publication states, and administrative transfers do not change the lifecycle by themselves.

Example

The fictional 2028 soil sampling protocol 451.RHF3C5GFXCAD1EHK is superseded: the 2029 edition is a distinct referent with its own RID. A retired mill line keeps 451.4713F4VRP8NYZ2D3 reserved forever and resolves to a tombstone. Deprecated and reserved identities are lifecycle states, not resolution statuses: a policy-permitted deprecated identity may resolve with 200 and a deprecation notice; a reserved one returns only limited metadata, or a 404 when withheld.

A common misconception

“Retired means draft, archived, or deleted.” Those are application publication states, and the specification keeps them apart from identity lifecycle. A resource can be unpublished, restricted, or revised while its identity stays active; and even a retired identity is never freed for reuse.

The lifecycle is part of the Identity Record, and the resolver evaluates it before disclosure. The lifecycle Viewgraph draws the states and transitions.

In the specification

The states: Document 08 §9.1. Meanings and transitions: §18.4. HTTP behaviour of each state: §18.7. Try the superseded protocol in the demonstration.