Entity resolution
Informational
Entity resolution is the process of determining which real-world legal entity a counterparty corresponds to — the registered company, its jurisdiction, and its tax status — rather than only verifying that a request came from a particular key or account. Authentication proves control of a credential. Entity resolution answers who is on the other side.
How it works
Most identity primitives — DNS records, TLS certificates, OAuth tokens, API keys, decentralized identifiers — prove that whoever presented the credential controls it. None of them establish that the holder is a specific incorporated company in a specific jurisdiction. Resolving that requires linking the credential to independently verifiable evidence about a legal entity, and recording the confidence of that link along with the evidence behind it.
Example
Northwind's agent pays a vendor identified as `helia.dev`. Authentication confirms the request was signed by the key registered to that domain. It does not establish whether the recipient is Helia Compute Inc., a Delaware corporation with an EIN, or an individual contractor in Portugal. That distinction determines whether Northwind issues a 1099, a 1042-S, or nothing at all — and it cannot be answered by authentication.
Common questions
Is entity resolution the same as KYC?
KYC is a regulated onboarding process for customers of financial institutions. Entity resolution is the narrower technical problem of mapping a counterparty identifier to a legal entity with enough evidence to support a tax or reporting decision.
Why does a payments system need this?
Because tax and reporting obligations attach to legal entities, not to keys. A system that knows only which key signed a payment cannot tell you whether that payment is reportable.