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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

#11
post #3

> an average person having one username and password/authentication method that works across all services It's a bug, not a feature. It's people throwing away their privacy for convenience. It's proverbial dancing piggies. Problem with global-scale SSO is not corporations, that control shared identity. It's shared identity itself. Distributed SSO is as good idea, as eco-friendly vegan huffing solvent.

Yeah, SSO does not seem to be a problem inside e.g. corporations. The SSO solutions I've encountered there work rather well, and nowadays employees authenticate not much more than once or twice a day to get access to everything.

SSO outside of such closed realms, i.e. in the open Internet, rather only seems to be a "problem" because people don't want to adopt it. Instead, password managers are the solution that won. The Twitter thread mentions "No sweat: you can have as many Eth accounts as you want w/ different ENS names", but if you end up having one (or more, see throwaway accounts on Hacker News) accounts for each site anyway, why go through the trouble with public/private keys, when the random shared secret in your Password Manager works so well?

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

#12

Is this really what people want? Seems strange that a single set of keys or a passphrase would grant you access to not only your wallet - all your money - but also all your online services. Am I missing something or is this just a fancy way of having a single password that gets you access to everything, and if compromised would be utterly devastating.

> But wait, what if you don't want a single account for the Internet? You definitely should keep certain activities separate.

> No sweat: you can have as many Eth accounts as you want w/ different ENS names

https://twitter.com/BrantlyMillegan/status/14023881680418119...

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

#13
post #4

It's odd this thread doesn't mention the sovereign self identity (SSI) efforts, DID Auth, etc. Folks who have been working in this area for years at this point and have some traction.

The issue with placing your identity on the blockchain is if someone gets your keys they become you. That's not a useful construct. Not your keys, not your life sounds awful .

Regardless of the pros and cons of various schemes, it's a strange omission.

For what it's worth I think the whole effort is wrong-headed except in some pretty niche areas of credentialing, somewhat for reasons you allude to; but it's weird context to ignore.

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

#14
post #4

It's odd this thread doesn't mention the sovereign self identity (SSI) efforts, DID Auth, etc. Folks who have been working in this area for years at this point and have some traction.

The issue with placing your identity on the blockchain is if someone gets your keys they become you. That's not a useful construct. Not your keys, not your life sounds awful .

Revocation would still be possible, I guess. At least it should be possible to build a revocation flow on top of blockchain.

I am not so sure this kind of authentication will really catch on - the UX of Metamask and other wallets is just atrocious for say my father.

BUT I do happen to like to connect to a site just with my ETH wallet, it is much nicer than using username/password or handing over ALL your data to Google for the OAuth convenience. It's a bit sad that the web is no longer a place for people with basic tech literacy, I'd love to use my Ledger Nano everywhere.

I also was really fond of Civic for KYC and stuff, but it's gotten awfully silent.

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

#15
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…

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

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

#16
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…

[deleted]

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

#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 comfort that if worst comes to worst, there is a human somewhere on the planet who can reset my password for me. They might be hidden in a nigh-impenetrable labyrinth of automated emails, but they exist, and I could get them to help me if I make enough of a fuss on Twitter.

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

#18
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…

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

The word reminds me of scones for some reason ...

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

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The word reminds me of scones for some reason ...

I wondered if it was a reference to Oliver Cromwell who was known for his utilitarian manner.

Scones sounds tastier.

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

#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 to explain asymmetric keypairs to mother-in-law who's in her 70s and needs help applying Windows patches? I sure don't. And I spend my days in SAML and OAuth world.

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