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Concept

Revocation Registry

The mechanism an issuer uses to mark a verifiable credential as revoked so verifiers can detect it, using approaches such as status lists or cryptographic accumulators. It answers "is this credential still valid" without the verifier having to contact the issuer directly.

Revocation is the hardest unsolved part of decentralized identity, because the naive fix (ask the issuer) reintroduces exactly the phone-home the model removed. Status lists are the pragmatic compromise, publishing a compressed bitmap the verifier can cache, at some cost to privacy since position in the list is an identifier. Cryptographic accumulators preserve privacy better and are heavier to operate.

See also: verifiable credential, issuer, holder, verifier, AnonCreds, verifiable credentials standard

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