Comment by readams
4 years ago
But it doesn't solve that at all since there's no way to tie something on the block chain to the real world. All the same problems of knowing whether some particular PGP key belongs to the person you want apply the same to a wallet address.
I probably should have worded it differently to avoid that connotation. There are a lot of identity protocols but that's not what I was focusing on.
On HN I am Sargos. You know this because I am replying to you and only I can do that with this account. I can also tell you that I'm @JamesCarnley on Twitter but there's no way for you to verify that. If I were using my public key to log into HN and Twitter you would know those are both my accounts and thus my persona is verified across multiple applications. If I were to link my public key to my government's identity database then you'd also be able to verify I am really James in real life as well.
And none of that has anything to do with blockchain.
It feels like you're trying really hard to not get web3 any credit here. Try making something like this in the traditional web. People have tried and failed.
Ethereum provides a robust, secure, and increasingly usable key storage and usage system to everyone which makes "just signing a message" a simple task and not a 10 step process probably involving a CLI. It's worth considering the utility of this and the possibilities everyone having a person public/private key pair allows. My fellow software developers among us likely have their mouths watering at the use cases this unlocks. Here's a pretty good thread about the implications: https://twitter.com/BrantlyMillegan/status/13892701158840975...
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You can verify that you're the same person on Twitter by mentioning “I'm @Sergos on HackerNews” in your Twitter.