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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

#61

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #54
bcmillegan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by NicoJuicy »

tptacek wrote: post #54
bcmillegan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

This 100%.

Additionally, they want decentralized logins. People use logins of work and their phone all the time. No work environment is going to give control out to help their employees for example.

No SAAS wants to be unable to help their users.

They mention that DNS isn't meant to be about auth and then they talk about signing your identity with your wallet private keys. I want that to be totally seperated!

And blockchain isn't meant for sso either.

So many people just won't understand any if this, this is just a dead born baby from the start. The statement "many people use this" is probably insignificant in relative terms. I'd be surprised if there are 50 on Belgium in a population of 10 million.

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

#64

Post by kasey_junk »

psanford wrote: post #22
jonplackett wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone else wondering what cromulent means: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-does-crom...

The word 'cromulent' embiggens the smallest man.

I’d never heard the word cromulent until I came to HN.

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

#65

Post by chrisco255 »

deft wrote: post #53
chrisco255 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a cash grab. Its an optional domain registrar. Feel free to start your own smart contract based registrar. Otherwise .eth domains are accepted pretty much everywhere as a substitute for a public key. ETH addresses are 40 digits long. Yes, you can copy/paste. But having yourname.eth is nice for user friendliness. Best part though is, you have a choice. And you can always register a domain much later if you ever feel the need.

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

#66

Post by bcmillegan »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #20

So the Director of Operations of ENS Domains says Ethereum has solved an extremely solved problem and one of the cornerstones of that solution is... wait for it... ENS Domains. Gotcha. I also take issue with: >Ethereum is giving average ppl computer generated public/private key pairs... 'Average' people aren't into crypto. And the average computer user doesn't know how to use asymmetric keypairs. Anyone want to try t…

> So the Director of Operations of ENS Domains says Ethereum has solved an extremely solved problem and one of the cornerstones of that solution is... wait for it... ENS Domains. Gotcha.

Yep. Note that ENS is an open source self-running protocol, i'm really the dir of operations of True Names LTD, the non-profit that de facto manages. Funds raised from .ETH name registrations/renewals don't even go to TNL but to an Ethereum community multisig (never spent, but plan is to use it for long-term ENS dev funding). I'm thinking about these things precisely because I'm working on the project.

>'Average' people aren't into crypto. They increasingly are

>Anyone want to try to explain asymmetric keypairs to mother-in-law who's in her 70s and needs help applying Windows patches?

You don't have to, just like you don't have to explain to her how TCP/IP works. You just have an account and it works.

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

#67

Post by bcmillegan »

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…

> There were loads of vendor-neutral identity ideas that all fell flat because nobody wants to sign up just for an identity.

Yep, I agree SSO by itself isn't enough of an incentive to use something. A key part of the thread is that that's not what's happening. People are getting Ethereum accounts and even ENS for other reasons, and the fact that this is being used for SSO is a side-effect.

>This one is hilariously complicated; Yes, but this is getting simpler over time. Better than it was a few years ago, still clunky, getting better over time. That is what crypto incentives is doing to pub/priv key management and related things. Again, this is a key part of the thread: crypto is incentivizing adoption and improvements in tech that existed previously but people didn't have a strong enough incentive to adopt or improve.

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

#68

Post by bcmillegan »

deft wrote: post #53
chrisco255 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A decentralized naming system that solves what was previously thought to be an unsolvable computer science problem (Zooko's Triangle) that's open source and self-running, and where funds (that are raised with a minimum fee to prevent name squatting) go to a community multisig, is "rent-seeking" and "pointless cash grab"?

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

#69

Post by bcmillegan »

Imnimo wrote: post #17

There are a lot of downsides to "Sign in with Google", but I am generally willing to accept them because I think I could recover my account if I lost my password. I'm not certain I could do so, because we've all read plenty of horror stories about Google's customer support. But I don't think I could recover an Ethereum private key. I'm sure there are esoteric ways of doing this. But ultimately what I want is the comf…

FYI, you can still have that exact kind of service with Ethereum accounts, some wallets offer that. It's improving all the time, but there are already and will continue to be many offerings on how to manage an Ethereum account. But the key thing is that the underlying system is the same.

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

#70

Post by bcmillegan »

cors-fls wrote: post #55

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.

It does not cost $120/yr. ENS protocol fees are: - unlimited subdomains, free - importing DNS name into ENS, free - for .eth names, based on length: 3 characters, $640/yr; 4 ch, $160/yr; +5 ch, $5/yr

For .eth names, you can pay ahead as many years as you want, so you can pay once and forget it about it.

The you likely got to $120 is that there is also Ethereum network gas fees to pay to registration a name. That's a one time thing and fluctuates a lot. Since you can register for many years at a time, you can pay the gas fee once and get the name for many years. We're also working on putting parts of ENS on L2s to cut down on gas fees dramatically.

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