I've been working on a project for the last six months that brings mTLS to the masses. Meaning, post-quantum end-to-end encryption with human readable identities. It uses a decentralized root of trust for, basically, a lot of the history this article covers.
Human readable identities are the hardest part (unless you just mean BIP-style word chains). What’s your approach look like? How do you prevent collisions?
You register a DNS-style name. Registrations lasts a year with a 3 month post-expiration window to reregister, otherwise it gets released back. The system goes out of its way to make name trading uneconomical - specifically to work against speculators and name-sitters from coming in and ruining things.
Ah, ok. Is there a fallback for using bare keys instead of human readable names? If not, you have just recreated a central gatekeeper problem; you could be ordered to terminate name service for someone. Unless it’s using some decentralized crypto system like eth.
Optional human readable names could be a good system combining convenience with resilience.
It's using a decentralized backend. No, it's not using any existing blockchain, nor does it have any tradable token. It does have some blockchain properties, but the main layer is built on top of libp2p.
Agreed it's a very hard problem. We're in the process of forming a syndicate of like-minded parties who are interested in seeing this come to life because the model itself has no exit plan and is basically anathema to traditional capital funding.
Also, to be clear, names are hashed/salted in the backend with Argon2ID and a rotating salt. So the name index itself isn't enumerable, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee names are private once they are shared publicly. Theoretically you could lookup someone based on their public key without knowing their name - so in that sense it's somewhat close to what you're describing.
Interesting. Yes, the possibility of direct key lookup would solve the problem, especially if existing contacts remain connected even after name expiration/revocation.
Perhaps you could do a name presale, although I’m not sure that would be enough funding. I look forward to hearing more about it.
I've been working on a project for the last six months that brings mTLS to the masses. Meaning, post-quantum end-to-end encryption with human readable identities. It uses a decentralized root of trust for, basically, a lot of the history this article covers.
Human readable identities are the hardest part (unless you just mean BIP-style word chains). What’s your approach look like? How do you prevent collisions?
You register a DNS-style name. Registrations lasts a year with a 3 month post-expiration window to reregister, otherwise it gets released back. The system goes out of its way to make name trading uneconomical - specifically to work against speculators and name-sitters from coming in and ruining things.
Ah, ok. Is there a fallback for using bare keys instead of human readable names? If not, you have just recreated a central gatekeeper problem; you could be ordered to terminate name service for someone. Unless it’s using some decentralized crypto system like eth.
Optional human readable names could be a good system combining convenience with resilience.
It's using a decentralized backend. No, it's not using any existing blockchain, nor does it have any tradable token. It does have some blockchain properties, but the main layer is built on top of libp2p.
Agreed it's a very hard problem. We're in the process of forming a syndicate of like-minded parties who are interested in seeing this come to life because the model itself has no exit plan and is basically anathema to traditional capital funding.
Also, to be clear, names are hashed/salted in the backend with Argon2ID and a rotating salt. So the name index itself isn't enumerable, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee names are private once they are shared publicly. Theoretically you could lookup someone based on their public key without knowing their name - so in that sense it's somewhat close to what you're describing.
Interesting. Yes, the possibility of direct key lookup would solve the problem, especially if existing contacts remain connected even after name expiration/revocation.
Perhaps you could do a name presale, although I’m not sure that would be enough funding. I look forward to hearing more about it.
“Everything is end-to-end encrypted… depending on how you define the ends.”
It is not great that they use the E2EE term to describe TLS, although it's for a good cause