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Representing SHA-256 Hashes as Avatars

francoisbest.com

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Re: Representing SHA-256 Hashes as Avatars

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There might not be 2^256 distinguishable objects but maybe someone can come up with 2^16 distinguishable objects and just string 16 of them together. If there is one character off in a string of 40 hexadecimal characters it is hard to notice but that would be easier to detect in a set of 16 symbols.

Memorizing order in a set of 16 similar objects is too difficult for me

I don't think you would need to memorize the order, just compare them side by side to check that they are the same.

Re: Representing SHA-256 Hashes as Avatars

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memorizing order in a set of 16 similar objects is too difficult for me

I don't think you would need to memorize the order, just compare them side by side to check that they are the same.

If you have the other avatar available for comparison, you don't need to do so visually -- the computer can compare the raw bytes directly.

Re: Representing SHA-256 Hashes as Avatars

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to distinguish between every object at every comparison. In most applications, you'll only be comparing a few dozen avatars with each other.

In the adversarial case, yes, there is. I agree that avatars help you distinguish among ~a dozen users; what they don't do is provide strong guarantees that the person you're talking to actually is who they claim to be.

That's probably a good point. Forging an avatar that is visibly close to the target I am pretending to be is challenging-but-doable.

Re: Representing SHA-256 Hashes as Avatars

#75
post #67

Urbit also developed a solution for turning a number into an avatar, although theirs only have 32 bits of entropy, and to be honest there are many that are difficult to tell apart: https://urbit.org/blog/creating-sigils/

these are pretty. Do you have any idea if there is a way to use the library with other data (hashes) other than the Urbit 'names' or what it is?

There is a JS sigil generator: https://github.com/urbit/sigil-js#basic-usage And a Figma plugin: https://github.com/urbit/sigil-figma-plugin

Urbit names are just another representation of a 32-bit number, like the sigils. You can use any 32-bit number as the "seed" for a sigil.

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