Inventories, Not Identities

...blockchain-based accounts are particularly apt at persistent pseudonymity through providing a public, pseudonymous, and cross-platform address that displays its actions over time, what Shreyas Hariharan calls on-chain reputation. What we need, then, is a technical stack that supports not an identity, but a collection of identities to navigate th... See more

Put in more traditional terms, multi-signature accounts can be explained as a form of joint bank account.... but one that acts more like a platform than an account

Occupying the middle ground between Facebook’s real-name policy and 4chan’s posts without accounts, platforms like Reddit and Twitter are home to many pseudonymous accounts. The key quality, here, is that these accounts display persistent pseudonymity.

The web came of age with the social platforms of the 2000s. While these social platforms created new forms of connection, in many ways they disappointed the early vision of the web as an open jurisdiction. While establishing norms for how we individually represent ourselves, social platforms also, in part, dampened the imagination of a pseudonymous... See more

...by using verifiable credential tools such as zero knowledge proofs, a subject can verify they possess personal data without having to publicly reveal it. In short, this wide range of possibilities means web 3.0 “wallets” are actually a very powerful identity regime, and we must think carefully about how we wield them

Even beyond supporting interoperability, web 3.0 accounts are the likely candidate for navigating the metaverse because they offer wallets, identity, and login functions in one platform. Within this portrait, web 3.0 and, in particular, multi-signature accounts begin to function much more like in-game inventories, which hold not only assets but ide... See more

Whether it’s the enforcement of legal identities, platform lock-in, or more implicit social norms, the logic of individualized identity was baked into web 2.0. With the advent of web 3.0, we have a chance to do things differently. Ultimately, web 3.0 identity will revolve around questions of privacy, portability, and ownership.

The narrative of ownership is integral to decentralized financial technology. Traditional online bank accounts represent balances as numbers stored in a centralized database, which can notionally be withdrawn or exchanged for goods and services at any point. As the story goes, this requires placing trust in a banking institution. Blockchain protoco... See more

Blockchain-based accounts are one potentially well-posed solution to the needs outlined above, offering self-custodial data and universal login. Today, creating an Ethereum-based account does not require entering any personal data, and a subject may create an unlimited number of accounts, each represented by a unique address.