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title: Gordian Envelope Summary

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# Gordian Envelope Summary

## fourth try

Gordian Envelopes are a specification for a privacy-focused solution for the transmission and storage of complex data structures. They are designed for use in a variety of industries, including education, software & AI, healthcare, financial, and legal sectors. Gordian Envelopes support cooperation and fair competition between parties with different interests, business models, risk scenarios, and legal systems by preserving the security and privacy of sensitive information.

Gordian Envelopes use a hashed Merkle Tree to provide privacy features and allow for the elision, encryption, or external reference of certain parts of the envelope. This enables access to only certain parts of the envelope for specific recipients while still maintaining the security and privacy of the rest of the data. The envelope's routing instructions and seals can be used to verify the authenticity and provenance of the data, ensuring that it has not been tampered with. Additionally, Gordian Envelopes support other cryptographic and privacy-related architectures to meet the needs of different industries. Overall, they offer a flexible and privacy-enhancing solution for the transmission and storage of complex data structures.

## 3rd try to summarize Gordian Envelope into minimal paragraphs:

Gordian Envelopes are a specification for a privacy-focused solution for the transmission and storage of complex data structures. They are designed to be used in a variety of industries, including education, software & AI, healthcare, financial, and legal sectors.

Gordian Envelopes are intended to be a more privacy-focused alternative to existing data formats such as RDF, JSON-LD, and JWT for interoperable exchange between different databases. Additionally, Gordian Envelopes support a wide variety of cryptographic data to meet the needs of different industries. 

Gordian Envelopes use a hashed Merkle Tree to provide their privacy features, and they support cryptographic and privacy-related architectures to offer selective disclosure and progressive trust. This allow for the elision, encryption or external reference of certain parts of the envelope while still preserving the integrity of the complex structured data. This is useful for offering access to only certain parts of the envelope to specific recipients while maintaining the security and privacy of the rest of the data. The envelope's routing instructions and seals can be used to verify the authenticity and provenance of the data, ensuring that it has not been tampered with. 

## 2nd try to summarize value proposition:

The Gordian Envelope is a specification for the architecture of a "smart document" that offers a privacy-focused solution for the reliable, secure, and deterministic transmission and storage of complex data structures. It offers interoperability for a variety of industries including healthcare, education, financial, supply chain, software, legal, and public sectors. The value proposition of Gordian Envelopes is their ability to offer flexible, privacy-enhancing solutions for the transmission and storage of complex data structures in a range of industries and use cases.

The envelope metaphor is used to describe its capabilities, including the ability to contain things, be closed, offer partial transparency, have routing instructions, have a seal, be certified, and have different recipients open it in different ways. Gordian Envelopes provide privacy features through a hashed Merkle Tree and support cryptographic and privacy-related architectures to offer progressive trust and selective disclosure. It also supports a wide variety of forms of cryptographic data such as seeds, keys, encrypted objects, descriptors, identifiers, and credentials to meet the diverse needs of different industries.

The core feature of Gordian Envelopes is their ability to allow for the elision (redaction or encryption) or external reference of certain parts of the envelope while still preserving the integrity of the complex structured data. This is useful for offering access to only certain parts of the envelope to specific recipients while maintaining the security and privacy of the rest of the data. It is intended as a more privacy-focused encoding architecture than existing structured data formats such as RDF, JSON-LD, and JWT for interoperable exchange (transmission and storage) between disparate relational and graph databases.

Overall, the Gordian Envelope offers a flexible, privacy-enhancing solution for the transmission and storage of complex data structures in a range of industries and use cases. It allows for the elision or external reference of certain parts of the envelope while maintaining the integrity of the data and offers a support for a variety of cryptographic data to meet the needs of different industries.

# first try to summarize

Gordian Envelope is a specification for the architecture of a "smart document". It offers a privacy-focused solution for the reliable, secure, and deterministic transmission and storage of complex data structures. It offers interoperability for a variety of industries including educational, healthcare, financial, supply-chain, software, legal and public sector. In these diverse industries, Gordian Envelopes can encode and transmit sensitive information, allowing authorized parties to access only the information they are authorized to view while maintaining the privacy and security of the data.

Gordian Envelope thrives in situations where 
diverse parties (individuals or organizations or governments) that have diverse business needs and risk models (different things they're trying to support or protect against) that cross a lot of trust boundaries (e.g., EU standards vs US standards for elision).
When you have a diversity of people & their needs & business requirements & legal requirements & risk-management requirements, that's where we're strongest (due to elision).

The envelope metaphor is used to describe its capabilities, including the ability to contain things, be closed, offer partial transparency, have routing instructions, have a seal, be certified, and have different recipients open it in different ways.

Gordian Envelopes provide these privacy features through a hashed Merkle Tree and support cryptographic and privacy-related architectures to offer progressive trust and selective disclosure. It also supports a wide-variety of forms of cryptographic data such as seeds, keys, encrypted objects, descriptors, identifiers, and credentials to meet the disparate needs of different industries. 

The core feature of Gordian Envelope is to allow for the elision (redaction or encryption) or externally reference certain parts of the envelope while still preserving the integrity of the complex stuctured data. This is useful for offering access to only certain parts of the envelope to specific recipients while maintaining the security and privacy of the rest of the data.

It is intended as a more privacy-focused encoding architecture than existing structured data formats such as RDF, JSON-LD and JWT for interoperable exchange between disparate relational and graph databases.

Overall, the value proposition of Gordian Envelopes is their ability to offer flexible, privacy-enhancing solutions for the transmission and storage of complex data structures in a range of industries and use cases.
