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Ethereum community has solved a major problem of the Internet: Single Sign-On

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Re: Ethereum community has solved a major problem of the Internet: Single Sign-On

#51

Post by chrisco255 »

mattbee wrote: post #29

There were loads of vendor-neutral identity ideas that all fell flat because nobody wants to sign up just for an identity. This one is hilariously complicated; the thread ends with this call to action: Want to get a portable web3 account? Pick an Eth wallet: https://ethereum.org/en/wallets/find-wallet/ Get ETH (sometimes built into wallet, otherwise use a service like Coinbase) Get an ENS name: http://app.ens.domains…

You don't need ETH or an ENS domain to use Ethereum for single sign on. Just need a wallet. The wallet can be totally empty. The ENS domain is simply for human readable account names.

Re: Ethereum community has solved a major problem of the Internet: Single Sign-On

#53

Post by deft »

chrisco255 wrote: post #51
mattbee wrote: post #29

There were loads of vendor-neutral identity ideas that all fell flat because nobody wants to sign up just for an identity. This one is hilariously complicated; the thread ends with this call to action: Want to get a portable web3 account? Pick an Eth wallet: https://ethereum.org/en/wallets/find-wallet/ Get ETH (sometimes built into wallet, otherwise use a service like Coinbase) Get an ENS name: http://app.ens.domains…

You don't need ETH or an ENS domain to use Ethereum for single sign on. Just need a wallet. The wallet can be totally empty. The ENS domain is simply for human readable account names.

No, the ENS domain is simply an additional layer of rent-seeking. Metamask sign-on is great. ENS is a pointless cash grab.

Re: Ethereum community has solved a major problem of the Internet: Single Sign-On

#54

Post by tptacek »

bcmillegan wrote: post #45
tptacek wrote: post #10

This is an extremely solved problem. Unless you have a dramatically interesting solution to the real hard problem, global account recovery , ordinary home users are effectively tethered to their email accounts, because that's how you reset a login. Since you're doing that already, "Sign in with Google" and "Sign in with Apple" are perfectly cromulent solutions and likely to continue dominating. The actual last thing…

Hey! Author of the thread here. Thanks for your comments! > This is an extremely solved problem. Not with the properties of Sign-In with Ethereum (SIE), which is single, user generated authentication credentials, a self-custody portable username in a naming system that isn't reliant on a trusted-third party, and that people are already getting for other reasons (to use Ethereum, so extra incentive to get set up, not…

It's interesting how much the problems with blockchain SSO mirror those of blockchain currency. In both cases, the goal is to liberate people from centralized authorities. And in both cases, the advocates seem both to radically miscalculate how much the benefit of that shift accrues to ordinary people versus abusers, and almost completely miss the benefits of central authorities, who have at least some incentive to make recoverability and reversibility accessible to consumers.

I don't doubt that there are things you do to facilitate account recovery on immutable distributed ledgers, but it just seems pretty clear to me that you're working against the design of a blockchain when you do that; the blockchain isn't doing much that centralized systems aren't already doing, and they're doing a lot that gets in the way.

Certainly, I wouldn't want to be the person whose job it was to explain to a SOC2 auditor how my company's Ethereum SSO system works.

I wouldn't stake real money on the value of ETH or BTC; the market can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent &c &c. But I'd probably make a real bet on blockchain-mediated single signon never achieving significant adoption, for some reasonable definition of "significant".

Re: Ethereum community has solved a major problem of the Internet: Single Sign-On

#55

Post by cors-fls »

This ENS thing could be interesting. It makes it possible to have a distributed identity. If only if Ethereum was not overinflated.

As a result, reserving a name on ENS costs 120$ a year. Few people would be ready to pay that to get a username.

Re: Ethereum community has solved a major problem of the Internet: Single Sign-On

#56

Post by leppr »

A lot of SSI is about delegating Sybil-resistance. Websites use Google or Facebook sign-on not just because it's more convenient for users, but also because signing up many accounts on these services is a bore, thus managing spam.

If the sign-up process was as difficult for the small services as it is with Google or Facebook, users would give up. But users already have Google/FB accounts or know it's worth it to have one, so they don't mind the process for Google/FB.

For now, there's no accepted standard identity mechanism attaching to ETH wallets. It's not a trivial problem either. If while reading this you just had some idea how to quickly solve it, chances are someone had it before and it's vulnerable to either centralized control or user abuse. ENS might work at deterring spam but it's way too restrictive for now.

Re: Ethereum community has solved a major problem of the Internet: Single Sign-On

#57

Post by Natsu »

tptacek wrote: post #10

This is an extremely solved problem. Unless you have a dramatically interesting solution to the real hard problem, global account recovery , ordinary home users are effectively tethered to their email accounts, because that's how you reset a login. Since you're doing that already, "Sign in with Google" and "Sign in with Apple" are perfectly cromulent solutions and likely to continue dominating. The actual last thing…

> The actual last thing in the world corporate users want is an authentication system their IT department doesn't control absolutely.

You'd think that, but I can't remember how many people have asked me how to implement mutual authentication using whatever random client certs their partners send to them and who don't realize that putting all those issuers in the SSL handshake bloats the heck out of it.

So they may well end up both accepting every random client cert issued by Entrust, Verisign, etc. and then advertising that fact to the world with every SSL handshake.

Re: Ethereum community has solved a major problem of the Internet: Single Sign-On

#58

Post by an_opabinia »

tptacek wrote: post #10

This is an extremely solved problem. Unless you have a dramatically interesting solution to the real hard problem, global account recovery , ordinary home users are effectively tethered to their email accounts, because that's how you reset a login. Since you're doing that already, "Sign in with Google" and "Sign in with Apple" are perfectly cromulent solutions and likely to continue dominating. The actual last thing…

> fact that people have multiple identities on purpose.

Most people still use the same password (or password management device, or physical MFA device) for both their work and personal logins. This is evidence that most people have the same identity, as would be intuitive. I’m not sure what the bigger picture is, but password secrets are the single service model for identity.

Re: Ethereum community has solved a major problem of the Internet: Single Sign-On

#59

Post by mt_ »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #43

the continued annoying arrogance of these crypto people, claiming things are just 'web3' all of a sudden because they've built some crazy thing that seems to be outside the mainstream.... but then posting stupid twitter threads (seriously, use a fucking blog post) claiming they've solved identity, while ignoring all the world SSO and SSI people have been doing/real work/tackling issues and dealing with how real world…

They need to keep their ponzi relevant

Re: Ethereum community has solved a major problem of the Internet: Single Sign-On

#60

Post by space_rock »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #43

the continued annoying arrogance of these crypto people, claiming things are just 'web3' all of a sudden because they've built some crazy thing that seems to be outside the mainstream.... but then posting stupid twitter threads (seriously, use a fucking blog post) claiming they've solved identity, while ignoring all the world SSO and SSI people have been doing/real work/tackling issues and dealing with how real world…

But think of how one can pump the price of their worthless token by writing this crap
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