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okay thank you Ming and thank you for
having me um I'm going to talk about
digital identity the the uh uh my
original topic was to talk about digital
identity and publicy structure but you
know there's only 20 minutes and who am
I kidding so let's uh launch right in it
so what is digital identity so
conceptually it's a digital object that
maps onto a physical entity normally
when we talk about this stuff uh we're
talking about people but it can also
mean a uh a company a corporation or a
device so the the common saying is that
on the blockchain nobody knows your
fridge and so they're they're talking
about digital
identity um why do we want digital
identity so we want to tie actors in the
physical world to the digital world so
this is for instance good because it
allows actors with some Authority in the
physical world to express that Authority
on the blockchain so you can imagine a
form of proof of birth or proof of death
as a uh digital attestation or signature
by a doctor uh also digital kyc is is a
uh common use case where a bank attests
that they've done certain checks and now
that attestation can be used on a
blockchain in a smart contract doing
crowdfunding or or what have you uh um
it also allows mapping of social
structures into the digital realm and
kind of enhancing um social structures
through smart contracts so this is for
instance uh Community
formation uh we have a dab called
inflect that that uses this also
reputation systems are anchored in this
notion of uh uh digital identity because
digital identities say stuff about each
other and and that's forms reputation uh
there's also the humanitarian side a lot
of um refugees or uh victims of human
trafficking often lack paper
documentation altogether and if we can
have a system where you have a digital
identity system maybe coupled with
Biometrics run by ngos Etc this this
might help a lot of
people uh how how how do we map from
digital to physical the most common form
is by using a secret that only the
physical entity knows so for instance on
ethereum you have an ethereum account or
an address that has an Associated
private key and anyone who has that
private key can send transactions
interact with contracts Etc and so the
the assumption is there that uh the
holder of the private key is the
physical entity and it it Maps uh onto
the blockchain another example is is
Facebook if someone has my password to
Facebook they can post on my wall and
they can kind of act as me in in the
context of the Facebook platform um so
lastly here
this a digital signature is proof of
knowledge of a secret without revealing
the secret so this is why uh digital
signatures are so important for for uh
blockchains because it uh authenticates
that you know the secret and that
creates the mapping to the physical
entity so uh the most common form of
digital identity today is what we call
Federated identity so this means that
you have a third-party identity
provider uh that hand handles this
mapping from the digital to the physical
and so whenever you act as your um
digital Identity On A blockchain or in a
digital space you do so through this
centralized intermediary so I'm sure you
all have seen uh log in with Facebook
log in with Google this is Facebook
acting or you acting through
Facebook um as a digital identity
so what we want to try and move towards
is this notion of self Sovereign
identity so uh this this image came up
when I when I Googled self Sovereign and
isn't it so
empowering um so so this is the idea of
having the user actually be in control
of their own identity uh if we use a a a
platform like ethereum then smart
contract can can do a lot of what the
central identity provider like Facebook
does uh while being a a shared resource
owned by no one and everyone
uh the idea here is that the user
controls their private Keys when
interacting uh with the blockchain but
critically the user can also choose to
let a third party control the keys for
them so we can have uh all the benefits
of of the Federated identity model in
the The Sovereign self- Sovereign
identity
model so how how do we build uh a
digital identity system with self-
sovereignty at the core so the starting
point is the notion
of uh a public key so with every public
key comes an Associated private key
and the public key then becomes this
digital object that is mapped to the
private key holder which lives in in the
uh uh Physical Realm so examples is uh
an ethereum address a Bitcoin address
something like a a a minilock ID if if
anyone has used or heard of
minilock um the this is like a very
onedimensional
um Atomic object but but sometimes this
is enough like if I go on um ujo music
for instance and I want to buy imin
heap's latest song uh imagin might not
even care who I am she only know she
only cares that uh that she gets paid
and so the the only information she
needs is that there is some kind of
identity here and I got paid by that
identity so sometimes this is all that's
needed uh most of the time though you
want some more uh information so what we
want to try and do is tie some data
cryptographically to this key and we can
do so using uh smart
contracts or in other systems uh you
might be able to do it using digital
signatures so some basic stuff we can we
can attribute to the to the key is uh a
name maybe a profile picture email Etc
uh in cases of Corporations you might
have some tax information Etc uh or for
the balance three uh triple entry
accounting system you have an accounting
Ledger that's attached to your to your
digital identity uh here we could also
bootstrap other services so you can uh
you can attri you can have an attribute
attribute attribute yeah that's one you
you can have an attribute which is your
uh Twitter account your Facebook account
GitHub
Etc um so here is kind of what it can
look like do we have the laser thing is
this no anyway I'll just point um so we
have this public key which is kind of
the core of of the
identity uh the corresponding private
key can can create and control a smart
contract that that contains the
attributes so the attributes could be
stored on the blockchain but normally we
we use a system like ipfs that Juan
mentioned uh and we can have hashes that
that corresponds to uh to objects and in
ipfs um a second thing that we want to
have is
attestations so what this is that we can
let other
identities attest to the validity of the
attributes that you uh connected to your
public key uh this can lend credibility
to the attributes uh while at the same
time letting the user have control of
their own identities so this could be
for instance a a government verifying
your date of birth so you yourself claim
that your date of birth is uh January
1st
1980 and the government can come in and
say yes we we verify that this is true
because we saw the the birth record or
something and they can do a digital
signature and now you have uh on the
blockchain a very
strong um a very strong certificate if
you will that that this is correct at
least according to this government
another one is is uh in the banks uh
they can verify that you have an
accredited investor status and so this
means you have to have more than
$250,000 in an account or something like
this um more advanced is uh reputational
attestations which we'll hear uh more
about later by
Andre uh so this would be you know not
just saying that this information is
correct or not but kind of like you know
more fuzzy things like I bought uh socks
from this person and it was good so I
get five stars um so this is what it can
look like in in that case you know you
have two of these
identities and uh the first one has some
this one has two attributes that one has
one attribute and one can do an
attestation of the other so it's it's a
very abstract concept but in general you
get things like you know certified
things by authorities but you also have
the notion of of web of trust where you
can build um you can build reputation
Etc from the attestation of of your
friends um so this is you know this
sounds pretty good uh there's a big
problem though and it's it's the
following that vitalic brought up uh
during the uh uh web of trust conference
in in San Francisco and
and the thing is you know what if you
lose your private
key and you kind of don't want a system
where if you lose your private key which
people do all the time H you don't want
to lose your identity because that's you
know that's too much to
uh too much power to put in in this one
thing um so we need to be able to
recover from Key loss which is I have my
key on my phone I lose my phone what do
I do and key compromise which is uh some
attacker gets my key and starts acting
in my
name so how do we do this
well uh the the way that the we've
approached it is we want to allow the
user to uh revoke and replace a key that
they suspect might be uh compromised so
let's say I lose my phone but I have a
backup okay someone could maybe find my
phone and get that key so I want to make
sure I replace that key so they can't
start acting in my name um and then if I
lose complete
control I could have a uh a smart
contract that I delegate the authority
to to uh regain control for the user so
a specific case of this is that you can
have a multi- setup where you where you
have three of your friends and then two
of them are needed to to regain uh
control for me so so they would
basically uh be able to override the
current key and say here is here is
another key that is now in control of
this uh of this smart
contract uh so let me talk about what
we've been doing at consensus uh with
the ort initiative so this is
basically um trying to take these IDs
and and make a uh functioning product
out of it
So
currently uh the current status is is
the following we have this kind of core
identity model where you have a uh a
controlling key that controls your
identity which is um attached to
attributes uh we use ipfs to to store
these attributes uh we have a registry
where you can where you can look up uh
the um the
uh uh you can look up the key in a
registry and get the corresponding
attributes uh this is currently used
inhouse in a uh a number of other
consensus projects so balance three the
triple entry accounting system the uh
registry
Builder uh the I mentioned inflect the
event and Community Management tool and
the read it like a discussion platform
nonsense um so here here is kind of like
a screenshot from from balance
3 uh where where we see in the in the
top right corner kind of the a very
familiar like user badge thing and that
information is is stored in ipfs and and
retrieve via this smart contract
system uh
future
directions instead of having it be tied
to a single private key we want to tie
the identity to a uh unique
identifier so that we can have uh the
type of key rotation key revocation uh
features that that we talk about and
also key
recovery uh we want to be able to have
the attributes
encrypted so that you can have private
uh attributes and to be able to uh
selectively disclose those to to uh um
to your uh friends or whoever uh also uh
integrating our our reputation system is
also on the road map so uh this is the
team for uport
and that's it I don't know if I have
time for questions uh there
sorry uh sorry I I shouldn't have
written that but anyway thank you so
much
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