Conversation

Notices

1. silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 08:33:28 JST silverpill

   @greyarea Thanks for the pointers. I probably won't work on this myself, my job is to pick a winning technology and integrate it. The winner is going to be the most resource efficient solution that supports key rotation and has redundancy while being user friendly.

   One interesting project that I discovered some time ago just has come to mind: https://github.com/Revertron/Alfis

   It is a lightweight blockchain-based naming system without cryptocurrency. Great idea, but it's PoW-based. There is gap between this and regular servers, and I think it needs to be filled.

   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 20:07:06 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Scott M. Stolz

     @scott DIDs are built from permanent identifiers: a public key, a URL, or an address of a record in a distributed database. I don't know if Zot and Nomad have that.

   • Scott M. Stolz (scott@authorship.studio)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 20:07:07 JST Scott M. Stolz

     in reply to
     @silverpill One way to implement key rotation would be to implement a hybrid solution, similar to how nomadic identity is handled in the Zot and Nomad protocols.
     
     Your fediverse address is tied to a server, but your identity is not. You can change your server & address, and still keep the same identity.
     
     You could use such a system to handle key changes for an identity. Even though the identity itself is nomadic, an authoritative server can announce a key change for an identity, similar to how an authoritative DNS server can announce changes to a domain name's IP address.
     
     Of course, none of that uses DIDs. But you might be able to take some of the concepts and apply it to DIDs.
   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 21:26:20 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Scott M. Stolz

     @scott Identifiers based on public keys are not permanent if keys can be changed. It sounds like identity here lives in associations between certain keys and certain servers.

   • Scott M. Stolz (scott@authorship.studio)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 21:26:21 JST Scott M. Stolz

     in reply to
     @silverpill
     DIDs are built from permanent identifiers: a public key, a URL, or an address of a record in a distributed database. I don't know if Zot and Nomad have that.
     Zot and Nomad have permanent identifiers that are based on public keys. In the database, the user's identity is stored as a hash. Currently, the key pair and hash never change for an identity, but the URL and address can change. The primary URL and address tell you what server is authoritative and where to send messages.
     
     And since Zot and Nomad allow you to have clones, as long as your message is signed with the correct keys, it is considered you, regardless of which clone (domain name) that you posted from.
     
     If you wanted to be able to rotate or change keys, an authoritative server would have to tell you that the old key and new key are equivalent and the same identity. And then your software would need to be able to recognize that.
   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 22:03:28 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen
     • ⚛️Revertron

     @Revertron @erlend Can ownership depend on approval by a group of authorities but otherwise be free?

     (At least in theory - in a hypothetical Alfis fork)

   • ⚛️Revertron (revertron@zhub.link)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 22:03:30 JST ⚛️Revertron

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen

     @erlend @silverpill Yep, it is very unlikely to change. Ownership of a domain must have a price.

   • Erlend Sogge Heggen (erlend@writing.exchange)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 22:03:31 JST Erlend Sogge Heggen

     in reply to

     • ⚛️Revertron

     @silverpill that’s an interesting one.

     @Revertron is the PoW approach in Alfis unlikely to change?

   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 22:35:03 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen
     • ⚛️Revertron

     @Revertron @erlend This is a trust model of a fediverse server. People may dislike authority when there is only one name database, but there could be hundreds of them.

     Blockchains are usually engineered with an assumption of powerful global adversary. That makes sense for a financial system, but not so much for identity. The system that I want is closer to a regular server, it only needs enough redundancy to survive a hardware failure and an admin who forgot to renew the domain name.

   • ⚛️Revertron (revertron@zhub.link)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 22:35:04 JST ⚛️Revertron

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen

     @silverpill You may do this, but the people don't want any authority to "approve" their domains.

     @erlend

   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 23:01:52 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen
     • ⚛️Revertron

     @Revertron Good question, and I don't have a definite answer. Perhaps databases can be identified by a public key of an authority (or something akin to a multisig address)? A fully qualified name may look like this:

     myname.z6MkhaXgBZDvotDkL5257faiztiGiC2QtKLGpbnnEGta2doK.namesystem

     That makes it poor DNS alternative (names are not human readable), but it's good enough for decentralized identity

     @erlend

   • ⚛️Revertron (revertron@zhub.link)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 23:01:54 JST ⚛️Revertron

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen

     @silverpill > but there could be hundreds of them

     And how will they interoperate?
     For example, I have my own DB, you have yours. I direct my PC to resolve names from my DB, you from yours. But domains are different, even intersecting.

     @erlend

   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 23:11:40 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen
     • ⚛️Revertron

     @Revertron I should probably provide more context. The goal is to build a user-friendly decentralized identity system for Fediverse. It will co-exist with DNS-based handles like @user@social.example, so readability is not a priority.

     The idea is described in more details in this proposal: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md

     Key-based identity will also be allowed, so people who want more control could choose that. The 'smallchain' option that I'm thinking about is supposed to be a middleground between key-based identity and centralized identity providers.

     @erlend

   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 23:24:18 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Hyolobrika
     • Erlend Sogge Heggen
     • ⚛️Revertron

     @Hyolobrika @erlend @Revertron The advantage is having a choice between owning your identity key and trusting an authority (with varying degrees of trust: single authority, friendly majority, etc).

     This is possible because identifiers will be based on DIDs.

   • Hyolobrika (hyolobrika@social.fbxl.net)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Mar-2024 23:24:19 JST Hyolobrika

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen
     • ⚛️Revertron
     If you have to trust your identity to an authority, then what's the advantage of your vision for fedi over nostr?
   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 00:09:30 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen
     • ⚛️Revertron

     @Revertron See adjacent comment:

     https://mitra.social/objects/018e570a-c86d-b3d8-caf2-88dfb8eaf5aa

     I think it is better to avoid logically centralized systems. From the perspective of a user, cryptocurrencies are a total disaster, it's like 10000 competing standards. Only a tiniest fraction of them have network effects strong enough to matter, and you're constantly pressured to pick a single database, though of course all of them have different tradeoffs so it is not really possible.

     Instead there should be one standard and 10000 competing providers.

     @erlend

   • ⚛️Revertron (revertron@zhub.link)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 00:09:32 JST ⚛️Revertron

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen

     @silverpill Don't try to invent the wheel :)
     Database must be single and replicated. And generally you should choose between PoW/PoS and PoA.

     Why do you need such a system in the first place? I didn't get it.

     @erlend

   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 00:43:04 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen
     • ⚛️Revertron

     @Revertron Coins need to move between providers, so bridges between providers and some shared database is probably unavoidable. I think with identities each provider can have different database.

     @erlend

   • ⚛️Revertron (revertron@zhub.link)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 00:43:06 JST ⚛️Revertron

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen

     @silverpill
     But those providers must have the same synced DB.

     @erlend

   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 02:52:50 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen
     • ⚛️Revertron

     @Revertron Yes, but this still requires a single database, right? Only the second tier (namespaces) is logically decentralized.
     What if there is a single peer to peer network, but multiple databases, each database is completely independent and can not be removed from the network. Like torrents, but with mutability. Is it possible?

     In such network clients will only download data they actually need, and each database will have its own rules (small invite-only namespaces, big commercial ones, and everything in between)

     @erlend

   • ⚛️Revertron (revertron@zhub.link)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 02:52:51 JST ⚛️Revertron

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen

     @silverpill @erlend
     The easiest way is something like this:

     1. We have one small blockchain without coins.
     2. Every server is proving their authority over their domain, and create a block in blockchain.
     3. Every other node/server is checking for some key published on that server, for example server1.example/root.key AND accept that block in their copy of blockchain.
     4. After that this server can create IDs in its 'namespace', signing blocks with new identities by its key.
     5. Maybe every identity can have their own keypair to move from one 'namespace' to another. Even if that server1 dies.

   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 04:14:35 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • ⚛️Revertron

     @Revertron Well, maybe we shouldn't call it blockchain then, but it doesn't have to be a single entity. Torrents and IPFS objects can't be removed. In fact IPNS is probably the closest thing to what I want, but it is too slow and buggy and the client is not lightweight.

   • ⚛️Revertron (revertron@zhub.link)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 04:14:36 JST ⚛️Revertron

     in reply to

     • Erlend Sogge Heggen

     @silverpill
     > independent and can not be removed

     This is why the blockchain must be a single entity. Every node should have ALL info if you want it to be not removable :)

     @erlend

   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 04:20:39 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • ⚛️Revertron

     @Revertron Also IPNS name is controlled by a single key, but in a proper system control should be distributed

   • silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 04:56:57 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • ⚛️Revertron

     @Revertron A single person, or a group, or a company. Let's assume for a moment that IPNS performance has improved and it supports FROST or something like that.

     The IPNS name is a namespace root. It is a pointer to some verifiable data structure, probably an append-only log, where all identity operations are recorded: add key, update key, revoke key. If the root key of namespace is distributed, no one can single-handedly add or remove an identity. Operations are performed only by a consensus or a majority vote.

     Such system would have all desired properties: redundancy on all levels, organizational diversity (no logical centralization), no payments required, key rotation is possible, user friendly.

   • ⚛️Revertron (revertron@zhub.link)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 04:56:58 JST ⚛️Revertron

     in reply to

     @silverpill Distributed to which entities? Who will own those names?