Accounts

Accounts are secure digital identities used to issue, receive, and manage certificates, enabling users to authenticate actions and access trusted data proofs.

What is an Account?

An Account in Circular is a secure digital identity used to manage certificates and participate in verified data workflows. It allows organizations, individuals, and systems to issue, receive, and authenticate certificates without relying on passwords, manual verification, or third-party intermediaries.

Each account is cryptographically secured and uniquely identifiable, ensuring that actions performed under that account, such as issuing a certificate or validating a document, are traceable, verifiable, and tamper-resistant.

What Does an Account Do?

Accounts serve as the foundation for interaction within Circular. They allow entities to:

• Issue Certificates: Certify the integrity of documents, datasets, or actions

• Receive and Validate Certificates: Accept proofs from other trusted parties and independently verify them

• Participate in Permissioned Workflows: Collaborate across organizations with granular access controls and auditability

• Track Activity: Maintain an immutable log of all certified interactions tied to the account

Accounts can represent real-world identities such as hospitals, CROs, regulators, research institutions, or individual contributors like physicians and scientists.

How Are Accounts Structured?

Each account contains:

• A unique account ID and display name

• A cryptographic key pair for signing and verifying actions

• A list of certificates issued and received

• Optional metadata to help with classification (e.g., organization type, jurisdiction, or purpose)

• Permission controls to limit who can interact with or access its records

While multiple accounts may be created within an organization to represent different departments or roles, each one functions independently and securely within the network.

Why Are Accounts Important?

In traditional systems, identity management is often fragmented. Logins are tied to centralized systems, and digital signatures require complex integrations or are absent altogether. Circular simplifies this with native, secure accounts that:

• Eliminate the need for intermediaries

• Enable privacy-preserving data exchange

• Provide a consistent trust layer across regions and institutions

• Create a permanent, auditable link between data and the entity responsible for it

Use Cases

In Healthcare

• Physicians can issue treatment certificates or patient referrals

• Hospitals can receive certified lab results or cross-institutional data from trusted sources

In Clinical Research

• CROs can issue certificates for trial enrollment, consent, and data uploads

• Sponsors can validate protocol versions and track certified submissions from trial sites

In AI and Data Management

• Research teams can anchor datasets and training logs to a certified account, proving origin and access rights

• Institutions can coordinate multi-party collaborations while keeping each party’s account and data responsibilities clearly delineated

Summary

Accounts in Circular are more than just logins. They are trusted digital identities that anchor every certified action to a verifiable source. Whether representing an institution, a researcher, or an automated system, accounts provide the traceability, security, and control needed for critical industries to operate with confidence.