8 ms·

If you believe in the mission behind Persona—identities controlled by users, not social network silos—then come help us rebuild Persona on top of blockchains. B

by natrius 11y ago

If you believe in the mission behind Persona—identities controlled by users, not social network silos—then come help us rebuild Persona on top of blockchains. Blockchains never shut down, and you'll be able to keep your identity even if you change email addresses. Talk to me: niran@niran.org

Dylan16807 11y ago
The problem is that it's still not directly controlled by you, it's controlled by your key. Certain classes of mistake are impossible to fix with no one in charge.
- drdaeman 11y ago
  Do you know of any identity systems, where identity are controlled by the actual user (not just credential holder), but don't allow any third parties (malicious but trusted notaries, like governments) to hijack or deny it? I've had a discussion about this, admitted that credentials and identities are different matters, but were unable to remember or think of any sane solution to this problem. :( If you know of any — please share!
- natrius 11y ago
  On blockchains, your identity isn't just controlled by your key. It's controlled by a program. That program can grant access to a particular key, but it can also encode a backup mechanism: as long as three of five of your closest friends vouch for you, you can add a new key. Decentralization doesn't mean no one's in charge. It means you get to choose who's in charge, and there's zero barrier to replacing someone you put in charge.
  - geofft 11y ago
    What sort of programs do you expect people to actually write/use? This seems sort of like saying, "If you switch to OpenID, you can run your own provider on your own website." Wonderful, but in practice people use some third-party OpenID provider. (A couple people might run a static website with the appropriate link-rel tags, so they keep control of the name but they're still delegating the actual auth work to a third party.) Is the standard program going to be to grant access to a key + 3-of-5 friends? How do you enroll if you don't yet have 5 friends on the system?
    - natrius 11y ago
      The most popular identity programs in the early days will have no backup or centralized backup. As more people establish identities, decentralized backups will be more feasible. As the ecosystem iterates on identity programs, we'll converge on secure, reliable, decentralized backups.
maxerickson 11y ago
What's the blockchain offer here? Like, compared to publishing a public key. Simplicity doesn't seem to be an answer.
- natrius 11y ago
  Blockchains are better than anything at key revocation. Publishing public keys isn't enough.
  - geofft 11y ago
    With PGP, key revocation is pretty straightforward: a self-authenticating revocation certificate gets published to the shared PGP database. This certificate could be kept in the clear in my safe deposit box, could be encrypted to a friend's key, could be M-of-N secret shared to N friends' keys, could be maintained by a third-party service that I've decided I trust, etc. As soon as that certificate is published, everyone sees it immediately. What does a blockchain add to this?
    - natrius 11y ago
      > As soon as that certificate is published, everyone sees it immediately. PGP key servers can refuse to relay your revocation. Blockchains are censorship-resistant. They also let you define your own authentication, revocation and backup logic. PGP identities are keys. Blockchain identities are programs.
      - geofft 11y ago
        The censorship-resistance property here doesn't require a blockchain, just a Merkle tree. See the article and discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10844612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10844612 (in particular my comment there). Specifically, a miner can refuse to encode your transaction just as much as your first PGP server can refuse to accept the sent key. (PGP actually has a strong advantage here, since it's easy to push your revocation to all the servers on your own, immediately, but you yourself are extremely unlikely to mine a block with your own transaction, unless the network is otherwise broken security-wise.) So the primary thing to worry about is a server that refuses to provide information on the revocation, once it has hit the shared database. But that can be solved by just having cryptographic monotonicity, that no transactions can be removed once encoded; you don't need the blockchain's specific power to order transactions and resolve conflicts. And a Merkle tree provides monotonicity. Certificate Transparency works this way. I agree that the PGP keyserver infrastructure doesn't currently provide this; I'm just asserting that it doesn't take a blockchain to provide it, and there are significant downsides (like waiting for a transaction to commit) to taking that approach. One thing that a blockchain would provide is the ability to revoke one key in favor of another, and uniquely determine which key supersedes the old. But it's not clear how important that ability is and whether it justifies the tradeoffs of a blockchain approach.
drdaeman 11y ago
I'm curious¹ Can you please comment here (or set up a webpage anywhere), explaining the overall ideas and proposals? If your idea of user-controlled identities is truly about something that users do possess (not just being provided), and you have any plan how to bring it to the world (without for users to need to install any software — that'd utterly fail — or do anything much besides clicking "log in as myself") — then I'm all for it. ___ ¹) Although I do believe Persona screwed it badly, as identities weren't controlled by users there, but merely leased to them by third parties - I find the concept of "identity provider" to be very wrong.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  I controlled my persona identity, and I didn't even run my own mail-server; I owned a domain and let someone else run the mail-server, and handled the persona side of things myself.
  - drdaeman 11y ago
    I'm not sure one can "own" the domain. Well, IANA does. Then, if it's a ccTLD, your NIR (controlled by your government) does. Then the registrar you've registered domain name with does. They all do lease it to you (although legal agreements sort of say you "own" it, it's not a true ownership), but in practice they can take away your identity at any time they see fit or forced to. Or impersonate you, without your consent or even knowledge. I think we've heard about enough domain name seizures to not assume they're something owned. And an identity that can be seized or revoked is something that's just not right. I really want an identity system without need to trust any third parties to work. I walk in a store, I say "hi", they say "hi", and we're good. Just like it used to be with usernames and passwords, but without obvious issues passwords have. Notaries are absolutely useful, but they should assert identities ("yep, we know this dud, he's cool"), not provide them.
- natrius 11y ago
  Your identity will be a program on the Ethereum blockchain. That program has an address that will be the unique key for your identity. That program will indicate which keys can act on its behalf, and will provide a mechanism to revoke keys and recover the identity if your keys are lost. Users will have to install something because browsers have no key signing mechanism. If you manage keys in a web page, that web page can access your keys. You'll need an extension or an app to manage keys for you. This approach sounds like a stretch, right? No website is going to use an authentication mechanism that requires a separate install. If that were the initial use case for this, I would agree. The real use for these identities is within decentralized applications. These apps don't run on servers and don't force you to use middlemen when you interact with other people. Decentralized apps don't shut down. They don't care where you live. They connect you with other people on the planet that want to connect with you to trade, communicate, or interact in any way you want. The two of you choose your own rules, not those of the companies or governments that stand between you.
tylorr 11y ago
This sounds similar to what Keybase is working on https://keybase.io/docs/server_security/merkle_root_in_bitcoin_blockchain https://keybase.io/docs/server_security/merkle_root_in_bitco...
Animats 11y ago
"Blockchains never shut down" Yes, they do. See this long list of failed altcoins.[1] Minor cryptocurrencies can fail in some unexpected ways.[2] The classic 51% attack has happened in practice to several altcoins.[3] There's also a "burst mining" attack, which can happen automatically - a big mining pool's control system determines that it would be profitable to divert the pool to briefly mining some altcoins and get all the blocks for a while. Then the difficulty goes way up, and the big pool goes off to do something else. Now the difficulty is so high that no blocks get mined at all for a considerable period of time and transactions stall. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=588413.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=588413.0 [2] http://www.ofnumbers.com/2014/06/03/thread-of-the-day-list-of-all-the-known-dead-altcoins/ http://www.ofnumbers.com/2014/06/03/thread-of-the-day-list-o... [3] https://maxminer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ftc_51attack.pdf https://maxminer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ftc_51attack.pd...
- iheartmemcache 11y ago
  Also, guys, please do research before starting new projects. There are already MULTIPLE identity verification services out there specifically designed to use blockchains. By all means, work on new projects, but if there are formal standards out there, make your implementation 1) interact with those seamlessly, and 2) consider long and hard as to what you're bringing to the table over existing, more mature projects. It's counter-intuitive, but actually developing nothing is better for decentralization than developing a competing project w/r/t user adoption and community fracture. https://okturtles.com/ https://okturtles.com/ is the most successful of them so far. I am not a crypto expert (even less of a blockchain expert) but the code looks pretty good, and the ecosystem is pretty mature. It has 1) its own aux. DNS service which is tied to your key (somewhat like Tor routing via onion but with acceptable latency), 2) decentralized IdP via block chains, 3) a browser plugin, 4) a whole lot more (see the Github linked below. https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain/blob/master/README.md
  - brutuscat 11y ago
    https://www.indolering.com/dnschain-is-harmful https://www.indolering.com/dnschain-is-harmful From the article: Update I’ve written a more-up-to-date technical overview of okTurtles, DNSChain, and Unblock.us. While the security model for DNSChain has improved, they are still misrepresenting the security parameters of their software. I’m going to leave this up since it debunks what DNSChain was selling. I also think their resistance to outside security concerns is very troubling. TL;DR DNSChain erroneous claims to have passed a “peer review” process. However, its most important peers, Namecoin developers, have rejected it. This has been the reaction of every Namecoin developer who has evaluated the project (over four at this point). The project misrepresents its security model, its design is unfixable, it should not be used in any nonlocal capacity.

by natrius 11y ago

Dylan16807 11y ago

The problem is that it's still not directly controlled by you, it's controlled by your key. Certain classes of mistake are impossible to fix with no one in charge.

drdaeman 11y ago
Do you know of any identity systems, where identity are controlled by the actual user (not just credential holder), but don't allow any third parties (malicious but trusted notaries, like governments) to hijack or deny it? I've had a discussion about this, admitted that credentials and identities are different matters, but were unable to remember or think of any sane solution to this problem. :( If you know of any — please share!
natrius 11y ago
On blockchains, your identity isn't just controlled by your key. It's controlled by a program. That program can grant access to a particular key, but it can also encode a backup mechanism: as long as three of five of your closest friends vouch for you, you can add a new key. Decentralization doesn't mean no one's in charge. It means you get to choose who's in charge, and there's zero barrier to replacing someone you put in charge.
- geofft 11y ago
  What sort of programs do you expect people to actually write/use? This seems sort of like saying, "If you switch to OpenID, you can run your own provider on your own website." Wonderful, but in practice people use some third-party OpenID provider. (A couple people might run a static website with the appropriate link-rel tags, so they keep control of the name but they're still delegating the actual auth work to a third party.) Is the standard program going to be to grant access to a key + 3-of-5 friends? How do you enroll if you don't yet have 5 friends on the system?
  - natrius 11y ago
    The most popular identity programs in the early days will have no backup or centralized backup. As more people establish identities, decentralized backups will be more feasible. As the ecosystem iterates on identity programs, we'll converge on secure, reliable, decentralized backups.

maxerickson 11y ago

What's the blockchain offer here? Like, compared to publishing a public key. Simplicity doesn't seem to be an answer.

natrius 11y ago
Blockchains are better than anything at key revocation. Publishing public keys isn't enough.
- geofft 11y ago
  With PGP, key revocation is pretty straightforward: a self-authenticating revocation certificate gets published to the shared PGP database. This certificate could be kept in the clear in my safe deposit box, could be encrypted to a friend's key, could be M-of-N secret shared to N friends' keys, could be maintained by a third-party service that I've decided I trust, etc. As soon as that certificate is published, everyone sees it immediately. What does a blockchain add to this?
  - natrius 11y ago
    > As soon as that certificate is published, everyone sees it immediately. PGP key servers can refuse to relay your revocation. Blockchains are censorship-resistant. They also let you define your own authentication, revocation and backup logic. PGP identities are keys. Blockchain identities are programs.
    - geofft 11y ago
      The censorship-resistance property here doesn't require a blockchain, just a Merkle tree. See the article and discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10844612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10844612 (in particular my comment there). Specifically, a miner can refuse to encode your transaction just as much as your first PGP server can refuse to accept the sent key. (PGP actually has a strong advantage here, since it's easy to push your revocation to all the servers on your own, immediately, but you yourself are extremely unlikely to mine a block with your own transaction, unless the network is otherwise broken security-wise.) So the primary thing to worry about is a server that refuses to provide information on the revocation, once it has hit the shared database. But that can be solved by just having cryptographic monotonicity, that no transactions can be removed once encoded; you don't need the blockchain's specific power to order transactions and resolve conflicts. And a Merkle tree provides monotonicity. Certificate Transparency works this way. I agree that the PGP keyserver infrastructure doesn't currently provide this; I'm just asserting that it doesn't take a blockchain to provide it, and there are significant downsides (like waiting for a transaction to commit) to taking that approach. One thing that a blockchain would provide is the ability to revoke one key in favor of another, and uniquely determine which key supersedes the old. But it's not clear how important that ability is and whether it justifies the tradeoffs of a blockchain approach.

drdaeman 11y ago

I'm curious¹ Can you please comment here (or set up a webpage anywhere), explaining the overall ideas and proposals? If your idea of user-controlled identities is truly about something that users do possess (not just being provided), and you have any plan how to bring it to the world (without for users to need to install any software — that'd utterly fail — or do anything much besides clicking "log in as myself") — then I'm all for it. ___ ¹) Although I do believe Persona screwed it badly, as identities weren't controlled by users there, but merely leased to them by third parties - I find the concept of "identity provider" to be very wrong.

aidenn0 11y ago
I controlled my persona identity, and I didn't even run my own mail-server; I owned a domain and let someone else run the mail-server, and handled the persona side of things myself.
- drdaeman 11y ago
  I'm not sure one can "own" the domain. Well, IANA does. Then, if it's a ccTLD, your NIR (controlled by your government) does. Then the registrar you've registered domain name with does. They all do lease it to you (although legal agreements sort of say you "own" it, it's not a true ownership), but in practice they can take away your identity at any time they see fit or forced to. Or impersonate you, without your consent or even knowledge. I think we've heard about enough domain name seizures to not assume they're something owned. And an identity that can be seized or revoked is something that's just not right. I really want an identity system without need to trust any third parties to work. I walk in a store, I say "hi", they say "hi", and we're good. Just like it used to be with usernames and passwords, but without obvious issues passwords have. Notaries are absolutely useful, but they should assert identities ("yep, we know this dud, he's cool"), not provide them.
natrius 11y ago
Your identity will be a program on the Ethereum blockchain. That program has an address that will be the unique key for your identity. That program will indicate which keys can act on its behalf, and will provide a mechanism to revoke keys and recover the identity if your keys are lost. Users will have to install something because browsers have no key signing mechanism. If you manage keys in a web page, that web page can access your keys. You'll need an extension or an app to manage keys for you. This approach sounds like a stretch, right? No website is going to use an authentication mechanism that requires a separate install. If that were the initial use case for this, I would agree. The real use for these identities is within decentralized applications. These apps don't run on servers and don't force you to use middlemen when you interact with other people. Decentralized apps don't shut down. They don't care where you live. They connect you with other people on the planet that want to connect with you to trade, communicate, or interact in any way you want. The two of you choose your own rules, not those of the companies or governments that stand between you.

tylorr 11y ago

This sounds similar to what Keybase is working on https://keybase.io/docs/server_security/merkle_root_in_bitcoin_blockchain https://keybase.io/docs/server_security/merkle_root_in_bitco...

Animats 11y ago

"Blockchains never shut down" Yes, they do. See this long list of failed altcoins.[1] Minor cryptocurrencies can fail in some unexpected ways.[2] The classic 51% attack has happened in practice to several altcoins.[3] There's also a "burst mining" attack, which can happen automatically - a big mining pool's control system determines that it would be profitable to divert the pool to briefly mining some altcoins and get all the blocks for a while. Then the difficulty goes way up, and the big pool goes off to do something else. Now the difficulty is so high that no blocks get mined at all for a considerable period of time and transactions stall. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=588413.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=588413.0 [2] http://www.ofnumbers.com/2014/06/03/thread-of-the-day-list-of-all-the-known-dead-altcoins/ http://www.ofnumbers.com/2014/06/03/thread-of-the-day-list-o... [3] https://maxminer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ftc_51attack.pdf https://maxminer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ftc_51attack.pd...

iheartmemcache 11y ago
Also, guys, please do research before starting new projects. There are already MULTIPLE identity verification services out there specifically designed to use blockchains. By all means, work on new projects, but if there are formal standards out there, make your implementation 1) interact with those seamlessly, and 2) consider long and hard as to what you're bringing to the table over existing, more mature projects. It's counter-intuitive, but actually developing nothing is better for decentralization than developing a competing project w/r/t user adoption and community fracture. https://okturtles.com/ https://okturtles.com/ is the most successful of them so far. I am not a crypto expert (even less of a blockchain expert) but the code looks pretty good, and the ecosystem is pretty mature. It has 1) its own aux. DNS service which is tied to your key (somewhat like Tor routing via onion but with acceptable latency), 2) decentralized IdP via block chains, 3) a browser plugin, 4) a whole lot more (see the Github linked below. https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain/blob/master/README.md
- brutuscat 11y ago
  https://www.indolering.com/dnschain-is-harmful https://www.indolering.com/dnschain-is-harmful From the article: Update I’ve written a more-up-to-date technical overview of okTurtles, DNSChain, and Unblock.us. While the security model for DNSChain has improved, they are still misrepresenting the security parameters of their software. I’m going to leave this up since it debunks what DNSChain was selling. I also think their resistance to outside security concerns is very troubling. TL;DR DNSChain erroneous claims to have passed a “peer review” process. However, its most important peers, Namecoin developers, have rejected it. This has been the reaction of every Namecoin developer who has evaluated the project (over four at this point). The project misrepresents its security model, its design is unfixable, it should not be used in any nonlocal capacity.