Cryptographic Succession

# Cryptographic Succession **Domain:** Cryptography / Institutional Succession / Continuity **Doc Type:** Canonical Governance Concept **Maturity:** Proposed ## Definition **Cryptographic succession is the governed transfer or renewal of signing, decryption, recovery and authorization capacity when algorithms, keys, devices, issuers or institutions cease to be trustworthy or available.** ## Requirements Succession should identify the authority to initiate transition, threshold approvals, recovery evidence, old and new trust anchors, overlap periods, revocation rules, audit records and a remedy for disputed transfer. No single departing employee, vendor or state should be able to make protected state permanently unreadable or unprovable. The process must preserve historical validation. A new key cannot retroactively make every old action valid, and loss of an old key should not erase the record of what it once authorized. [[wiki/Continuity Provenance|Continuity Provenance]] records the chain; [[wiki/Root of Trust Succession|Root of Trust Succession]] governs the deepest authority. ## Key Insight **Keys expire and institutions die; continuity depends on making trust itself capable of lawful succession.** ## See Also [[wiki/Crypto Agility|Crypto Agility]], [[wiki/Post-Quantum Migration|Post-Quantum Migration]], [[wiki/Durable Identity|Durable Identity]], [[wiki/Treaty-Backed Custody|Treaty-Backed Custody]]  ## Deep-Time Continuity Interface This node is audited through [[wiki/Deep Time Continuity|Deep Time Continuity]] for future control-surface conversion, ontological drift, succession, irreversibility, due process, and resource incidence. The backlink records analytical relevance; it does not establish continuity intent in the present rule or institution.