SD-JWT is following an existing OAuth (and OpenID) convention by including an 
underscore prefix in the names of claims about claims.  You’ll find that 
_claim_names and _claim_sources are registered at 
https://www.iana.org/assignments/jwt/jwt.xhtml, which are both claims about 
claims, rather than claims whose values are used in the usual way.    These are 
currently the only claims with leading underscores registered.

Therefore, I believe SD-JWT is on solid ground creating and registering the 
names _sd and _sd_alg as other claims about claims.

                                                                -- Mike

From: Dick Hardt <dick.ha...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2024 9:16 AM
To: Daniel Fett <m...@danielfett.de>
Cc: oauth@ietf.org; krist...@sfc.keio.ac.jp
Subject: [OAUTH-WG] Re: SD-JWT architecture feedback

…


Claim Names
Why do the claims start with '_'? Why not just 'sd' and 'sda'? Why is '_sd_alg' 
in the payload and not in the header?

While the underscore doesn't officially have any special meaning, adding it 
reduces the chance for collisions with existing claims and makes the 
SD-JWT-related claims sort nicely. All SD-related claims are in the payload, 
that's why we put _sd_alg there as well.
Do you have data that shows it will reduce collisions? I have seen many 
implementations that created their own claims that start with _ to reduce 
collisions with the same rationale!

 There is an IANA registry for claim names to avoid collisions.

The _ reminds me of internal C variables that others were not supposed to use, 
but eventually did.

_sd_alg is NOT a claim. It is a signal for which algorithm to use and should be 
in the header.

I'm unclear on the sorting advantage. They would sort together if they started 
with sd as well.

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