What is a cross-reference authority?
A cross-reference authority is an authority subsegment that contains a cross-reference. A cross-reference may be used at any level within an XRI authority segment, including as the root authority. Use of cross-references to specify a root authority enables the creation of private root authorities that do not require any centralized registration. Cross-referencing a globally unique identifier for the root helps ensure against name collisions (however there is no ironclad guarantee that two or more communities will not choose the same cross-reference for their root.) Typically a private root authority is identified by a URI.
