Polkaregistry: proposal for a new, more decentralized identity registrar for Polkadot
Overview
This is a draft proposal of a new type of identity registrar for the Polkadot network, focusing on optional real-world identity verification (without requesting the sender to disclose anything sensitive), and publicly-retrievable evidence of verification.
We accomplish the goal of optional real-world identity verification by taking advantage of existing publicly-available government eID programs (specifically in the beginning, Estonia's eID program, which through its e-Residency program is available to most parts of the world). The goal of publicly-retrievable evidence is done using a Keybase / keys.pub alike infrastructure -- where the signer publishes an authenticated signature on the platform it wishes to verify.
Rationale
- All existing and proposed Polkadot identity registrars require you to trust the registrar. This new propose registrar does not! This means it's more decentralized -- all verifications can be independently re-verified by anyone.
- It does not request any sensitive information, even for legal name verification, while in the mean time gets the job done, securely. We do this by taking advantage of existing government public-key infrastructure (currently Estonia's eID program). Note that legal name verification is totally optional for users.
- It respects users' privacy! We do not request any sensitive information, and we also do not even store any non-sensitive information. This is done by only storing the pre-image hash (and a retrievable web or IPFS url) in the registry. The users have full control in whether or how they want to distribute their identity evidence.
- It stays up to date! The registrar periodically reruns verification steps for all existing verifications, and notify users if any verification evidence is no-longer available or outdated.
Documents
Please see below for documents about the new registrar.
Operations
This project will be ran as an open source side project of Wei, and thus it
requires no funding. Registrar verification on-chain will be provided for free
without fees. However, Wei may send treasury tip proposals later in order to
cover necessary transaction fees.
Comments (7)
This is an interesting concept, have you found any compatible programmes running that are available to non-Estonian residents?
Estonia's eID is available to most parts of the world through Estonia's e-Residency program. I expect more of our legal name verifications from this proposal comes from that, than from Estonian residents! :)