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W3C DID Resolution

W3Cspecificationcore entry

Verified 2026-10-13. Status as of 2026-10-13. All entries.

Seams: S2

Status

Candidate Recommendation Snapshot 2026-08-06; current Candidate Recommendation Draft 2026-10-01 (also 2026-08-28), which marks the Decentralized Identifier (DID) URL dereferencing feature and sections 5, 6, 8 and 10 as at risk. The exclusion opportunity on the Patent Review Draft ended on 2026-10-05. PR #344, "full pass at DID URL dereferencing algorithm (isolated)", was merged into main on 2026-10-13 at 02:10 UTC (merge commit 0956c93). The W3C publication history read on 2026-10-13 still lists the Candidate Recommendation Draft of 1 October 2026 as the latest, so no draft has been published after the merge; the merged text was not read for the at-risk markings. At the DID Working Group (WG) call of 2026-10-08 (minutes at w3.org/2026/10/08-did-minutes.html, read 2026-10-13) a chair ran the poll "PROPOSAL: Merge PR344 and agree that any future improvements to the DID URL Dereferencing Algorithm should be handled as separate issues.": eight participants recorded +1 and one recorded -1, "some technical issues not sufficiently discussed, charter violation, process violation, breaks compatibilty with DID 1.0 and CID". The chair then said "by Chair's decision, we will be merging this PR" and asked that the technical points be raised as separate issues; the merge followed on 2026-10-13. The minutes do not record the poll as a resolution. The PR comments of 2026-10-08 record the same dissent, that the changes violate the WG charter, and the chairs' answer that they do not. The statement of 2026-10-06 that unresolved points of the PR would be run as proposals so that objections can be recorded was followed by this single poll; separate issues for the points of the -1 were not looked for one by one on 2026-10-13.

Relevance

The specification defines how a DID is resolved to a DID document and how DID URLs are dereferenced; the relativeRef parameter is used for product-level references such as Digital Product Passports (issue #332). PR #344 (merged 2026-10-13) was described on 2026-10-02 as replacing the dereferencing algorithm with handlers and dropping built-in processing of relativeRef and serviceType (the latter from GS1); the merged text (38 commits, rebased on 2026-10-11) was not compared with that description; a participant wrote (https://github.com/w3c/did-resolution/pull/344#issuecomment-5611077919) "This breaks various existing deployments and use cases that I have explained on WG calls, e.g. in the area of Digital Product Passports." On 2026-10-05 a chair (Will Abramson) wrote that "the chairs plan to run a proposal to gauge the consensus of the group for merging this PR", and that otherwise "maybe the group has to start seriously considering ripping out dereferencing entirely from the specification." He approved the PR the same day ("Needs a rebase, but other than that looks good to me").

Exclusion opportunity closed 2026-10-05; no patent disclosures or exclusions listed on the DID WG intellectual property rights (IPR) page as of 2026-10-06. On 2026-10-07 a chair (Will Abramson) wrote on PR #344 "The chairs intend to run a proposal to adopt this PR and replace the existing DID URL Dereferencing section."; another participant approved the PR the same day, noting a concern about the MUST on giving the user the choice of resolvers, and a third participant wrote "I support the idea that we run a proposal to merge this PR on Thursday." On 2026-10-08 a participant wrote on the PR "In my opinion, the changes in this PR violate the WG charter" (and, he adds, like the previous "Resolve DID URLs" proposal) (comment 6060762625); the same chair answered the same day "In the chairs view, as has been stated numerous times on the calls, their is no charter violation." (comment 6062369708).

On 2026-10-08 the same participant wrote that "The overloading of service type in this algorithm in my opinion requires a Class 4 change in DID 1.1, which is not allowed by the" (comment 6064294182). The same day that chair wrote for the chairs "My sense is the group is faced with two options", the first to "Adopt this PR as the new foundation for the DID URL Dereferencing algorithm" and the second to "Remove DID URL Dereferencing from this version of the specification" (comment 6062369708).

In a review comment the chair wrote "This diagram needs to be updated to 2. Resolve the DID" (4220468912) and a participant answered "Ok. I can get that in today." (4221259495); commit 697f09b of 2026-10-08 by that participant, is titled "removed DID URL from dereferencing diagram". Merge: the PR was merged on 2026-10-13, 02:10:47 UTC (GitHub merge record, read 2026-10-14).

PR #344 has no comment after 2026-10-08 (read 2026-10-13); the public-did-wg archive for October 2026 held three messages, the last of 2026-10-07, and the outcome of the call of 2026-10-08 is in its minutes (see the status).

Committed next

None declared in the sources read.

Boundary

WG resolved on 2026-09-10 that the specification "will not define an abstract Dereference() function signature" separate from Resolve().

Author participation

The author of this map took part in PR #344 with two comments on 2026-10-02 (relativeRef handler, serviceType); see Disclosure.

Sources

Overlaps

GS1-Conformant Resolver Standard 1.2.1, W3C DID Methods Working Group (proposed charter)

Neighbours in the map

Neighbours of W3C DID Resolution in the map Each circle is an entry of the map and links to its page; the colour is the kind of body behind it, a filled circle is a core entry and a dashed circle a context entry. The entry in the middle, with the entries it overlaps and the entries named by the same seams. Overlaps (3)Share a seam (10)W3C DID Methods Working Group (proposed charter) (W3C, context)W3C DID Methods Working… W3C Decentralized Identifier Working Group (proposed charter) (W3C, context)W3C Decentralized Ident… GS1-Conformant Resolver Standard 1.2.1 (GS1, core)GS1-Conformant Resolver… W3C/GS1 Workshop on E-commerce for Humans and AI Agents (Zurich, 8-9 Sep 2026) (W3C, core)W3C/GS1 Workshop on E-c… S2 GS1 Digital Link Standard, URI Syntax 1.7.0 (GS1, context)GS1 Digital Link Standa… S2 UN Global Trust Register, namespace urn:gtr (UN/CEFACT, context)UN Global Trust Register S2 UN Transparency Protocol, Identity Resolver (UN/CEFACT, core)UN Transparency Protocol S2 AI Catalog (Agent Card Working Group) (Linux Foundation, core)AI Catalog S2 x402 (Linux Foundation, core)x402 S2 schema.org open issues relevant to agents, bookings, product and establishment identity (Independent, core)schema.org open issues… S2 schema.org vocabulary for products, offers, sellers and lodging (current release) (Independent, context)schema.org vocabulary f… S2 Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) (Industry, core)Agentic Commerce Protoc… S2 Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) (Industry, core)Universal Commerce Prot… S2 W3C DID Resolution

Solid lines: overlaps declared by one of the two entries. Dashed lines, coloured by seam: entries named by the same seam (S1 to S4) in the seams note. Every node is a link.

Evidence and coverage

Read
On 2026-10-13: the minutes of the DID WG call of 2026-10-08 (w3.org/2026/10/08-did-minutes.html, read in the sections on PR #344 and the poll).
Not read
Minutes pages at w3.org other than that of 2026-10-08, Google Docs with the votes and slides of PR #344, the DID WG maintenance charter; the merged text of the specification and its at-risk markings; the repository role of the account that merged the PR.