A good high-level interview with Daniel Buchner, who was heading up Microsoft's effort to build decentralised identity, on Bitcoin.
This is an especially interesting discussion, in light of recent events, as it was recorded before Nostr came into existence, and before MicroStrategy started getting their feet wet with Bitcoin.
Daniel does a good job of explaining why, if we are to have digital id of any description, we should want it to be permissionless & censorship resistent, just like our money.
Might be worth having a look at Daniel Buchner's work, also.
He was working on a Bitcoin native decentralised identity platform at Microsoft, long before MicroStrategy had entered the Bitcoin space...
Here is my proposal for a 30 minutes talk about a better way to develop Nostr softwares in general, contrary to mainstream nostr believes.
https://github.com/nostrworld/nostriga/issues/13
“Nostr Native” vs “Nostr Integrated”
Nostr Native is applications that builds 95%+ features with Nostr relays only.
Nostr Integrated is applications that builds its own system and only integrate with Nostr for parts that make sense.
I will use case studies such as nostr:npub1kmwdmhuxvafg05dyap3qmy42jpwztrv9p0uvey3a8803ahlwtmnsnhxqk9 nostr:npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm, zap.stream by nostr:npub1v0lxxxxutpvrelsksy8cdhgfux9l6a42hsj2qzquu2zk7vc9qnkszrqj49 as “Nostr Integrated” applications and most other Nostr clients as “Nostr Native” applications.
I will argue that “Nostr Integrated” is the better way build applications.
I will then dive deep into how blowater.app transform from “Nostr Native” to “Nostr Integrated” and promote a little bit about my new project https://github.com/BlowaterNostr/relayed at the very end.
Please vote for me!
I believe this talk will be very insightful for developers and users.
Concept ACK.
This was something I struggled to get clarity on, when first learning about Nostr.
Nostr is marketed as permissionless, and so developers are more or less free to implement integrations, as they see fit.
This can be confusing, as questions arise like.. 'should I store large amounts of arbitrary application data myself, on private infrastructure, or is it acceptable to burden relays with this task'.
Obviously there are no set in stone answers to many of these questions, but to at least have a discussion around 'best practises' would be very helpful, especially for the newcomers...
It's enterprise software that uses the Bitcoin blockchain to anchor the public key portion of a public-private key pair.
The keys can then be used to sign emails, documents, etc, to bootstrap identity attestation, within an organisation.
In many ways, it's quite similar to how identity has evolved on Nostr.
We need more eyes on the hash based accumulator approach, deployed by Utreexo.
Perform your initial block download, as normal, and snapshot the UTXO state, at any time, saving it into a QR code or similar.
Bootstrap a new node instnatly, using this QR code, in the event of disaster.
Be an uncle Jim and allow others who trust you to bootstrap their own nodes, in a similar fashion.
As with all scaling there may be tradeoffs. But if it provides a means to stand up a consensus enforcing node in essentially no time, perhaps it's good enough to avoid the race condition that may occur, should a large portion of nodes become unreachable, for whatever reason....
nostr:note1ds5gtr6v9hze6pvfxfapy0f33wafza480ykvj2nqjmc55jw98qusevdhd8
Seems like a reasonable position.
One positive is that it looks like he's pushing his work to GitHub.
If he maintains the open-source nature of the product, at least we'll be able to vet and verify it, for ourselves, much in the same way we do with Bitcoin.
Unlike other centralised, black box approaches to digital identity, if he aims to shaft folks, at least we'll know about it, and the extent to which he's able to do it...
I'm not sure.
Another thought I had was, why not just use Nostr public keys...
🤷♂️
The lack of clarity around the details is the issue.
If Saylor approached this with purity of heart, he could actually end up gifting humanity something on a parr with Bitcoin itself...
i.e. the most robust, self soverign way of managing identity in a digital context.
It will be interesting to see which path he chooses, and the extent to which he can pull it off...
It's the ownly truly decentralised digital infastructure that we have.
If he was to build it on Ethereum and claim that it was decentralised, he would have been just as well to have Klaus Schwab code him something up, instead.
I think there's a paralell here with the argument around Bitcoins energy use...
Most bitcoiners make the case that using all of the electricity is worth it, because of the benefits truely hard money confers on society.
Equally, most bitcoiners make the case that 1 decentralised blockchain is enough.
By the same token, if the world is to have decentralised identity [and we can debate this, as a seperate issue], then perhaps the cost of a transaction or two, per block, is worth it....
No. Absolutely not. Ordinals are a prime example.
When Saylor announced his product, one of my first thoughts was to consider the possiblity of nodes filtering out his DID peg transactions.... 👀
Not suggesting I would do it, without more detail, but I think it's closer to how node runners should be thinking about these sorts of things...
If it doesn't align with your values, don't tolerate it on your node.
I can't prove it, but there was a large anonymouse donation made to support some of the recent legal battles bitcoiners were facing. I had a suspicion that Saylor might have had a hand in that...
That said, it shouldn't really matter.
It's on us not to put people on a pedestal. And it's on Bitcoin to stand resiliant, in the face of those who seek to profit from it, whether their motives are benevolent or otherwise.
I would need to read the product spec to be sure on this, however in the absence of the details, I would expect he would do something similar to Peter Todds Open Time Stamps project. ie use a single on-chain transaction to consolidate many multiples of DID information. A bit like transaction batching.
In that way, the layer-1 footprint of the project would be very insignificant.
I don't think the future is a binary outcome. ie total freedom or total slavery.
People will build many forms of digital identity systems, as despite their drawbacks, they do offer benefits.
To the extent that we have to have one (proving age to get into a bar, crossing borders, etc,), would we not rather use one that offers us maximum privacy and control, by making use of advanced cryptography?
Vs being compelled to use the one that centralises all of our data, and hands control over to WEF, et al ?
I think this is being overblown.
Saylor has been speaking publically about solving the issue of bots / spam for a long time now. [Having an 'orange check'].
I think what makes a digital identity system dangerous is centralisation, and the extent to which you are compelled to use it.
I haven't read his product spec yet, but so far I don't get the impression that he has betrayed either of those aspects.
[Happy to change my mind on this...]
If we accept that we're going to have to prove our age, to get in to a bar, or identify ourselves to cross a border, I'd rather do so using a zero knowledge cryptographic proof, vs whatever centralised monstrosity our local Governments carve out...
Bitcoin wallet developers != "Bitcoin Developers"
nostr:npub1jan3xfrvxmd35smylytmnp3ne0sgqh2x47yq766s55zaf6eja4rselx52y, feature suggestion for nostr:npub1ajlrwgfj4yerhqf7ady03h7wmtk2qr3gs7h3sxcx83k05yld36sswpzx3q: Peg-out to Pay.
Allows a user to specify a sideswap layer-1 address, rather than auto swapping to the built in wallet.
🙏 🕺 ⚡
If you read history, you will find that the climate on earth has always varied. The more extreme times are called ice ages, for example, but less extreme changes in the climate are common throughout history.