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One thing that cryptocurrencies achieved is they introduced a private key authentication at scale. For a moment, there was a hope that we can move to private ke
by YeBanKo 5y ago
One thing that cryptocurrencies achieved is they introduced a private key authentication at scale. For a moment, there was a hope that we can move to private key authentication mechanism. But, unfortunately, it was quickly rolled back by introduction of custodial wallets and we got pulled back into world of passwords.
- sneak 5y agosneak’s law: users can not (and a tiny subset of users that actually know how to, will not) securely manage* key material. *manage: generate, transmit/sync, authenticate, back up Discussion: https://youtu.be/9k4GP3Evh9c https://youtu.be/9k4GP3Evh9c I actually operate a business that exists solely as a result of this fact. If you give a user a key, they will lose it. If they’re a customer, you need to have a back up plan for what happens when they lose their keys.
- YeBanKo 5y ago> users can not (and a tiny subset of users that actually know how to, will not) securely manage* key material. True. And the is also true for password. Sure, generation is different and a way to authorizing a transaction is different, but otherwise form usage perspective password can be viewed as a primitive case of a private key. And industry made a huge progress in password authentications: password managers, OTP, biometric authentications, WebAuthn, etc. Specifically password managers and biometric authentication mechanisms can be re-used for private keys as well. Having multiple wallets, multisig authentication and smart contracts allows to have recovery paths, while making sure that varios custodians can only perform certain transactions and in a transparent way.