Identity Legos

um of course now we've got an amazing panel to talk about identity legos the blocks and building blocks of identity uh danny zuckerman from three box labs ceramic network take it away thank you david and thanks michael for that framing of identity which i agree is a great lead-in to this and also thanks to uh john and the rest of the east denver team um it's so exciting to be here this is always such a great event almost more so this year it's really impressive you guys have done virtually also really excited for this panel and to hear these five panelists um i think they're coming up now there we go um so this is a really appropriate way to close out today's talks on identity and privacy each of the folks up here works and thinks about identity each in different ways but i think in ways that really complement each other and i think that's coming together in a really amazing composable identity stack that is going to give web free developers some really powerful tools that really blow away anything that could be done with one solution on its own and also anything that exists in web 2. i'm super excited about that and see what it unlocks i'll kick it off by just introducing myself briefly i'm danny zuckerman i spent the last four years working on decentralized identity most recently as one of the founders of three box labs along with michael um and before that co-authored a book on social identity um i'm seeing the panelists change faces here and i'm gonna have to like step my game up a little bit and yeah i'll pass it off to you guys um maybe i will kick it to uh now first each of you guys want to spend about a minute introducing yourself talking about what you work on and how that relates to the broader identity ecosystem yeah sure um thanks danny yeah super happy to be here um hope you all can hear me okay um so yeah i'm val i am one of the members of the three box labs team i'm a software engineer mostly focused on infrastructure um and yeah we are working on the ceramic network so uh michael just gave a presentation that kind of talked about some of the things that we're doing there and also building idx which is our identity uh protocol cool and maybe brian i think everybody's seeing unlike zoom the uh same order so we can just go down the line here i was i wasn't sure if it's the same it's cool hey everyone uh my name is brian uh i'm the ceo of the founder of rendell it's a platform to earn and learn uh for different applications mainly focused on kind of building this unchained resume for different crypto individuals as they go down radical uh previously worked at adapter labs working on different on their layer one flow and different gaps like cheese wizards with the kitties and so forth so uh yeah happy to be here i think it's my turn next hi guys alana la ferreira in your last name uh last minute i work at consensus i am the commercial lead for identity i also am publisher of decrypt so two different things all in the commercial realm i come from the crypto advertising space i ran ad standards for a while i came from traditional publishers as well as startups i'm steeped in identity and what we need uh both in the world and in very specific verticals like media hi i'm adam i'm from bright id we have a very laser like focus on uh allowing people to prove to applications that they only exist once in the system it's a very important very specific problem and yeah happy to be here and talk about pride id and anything else related to identity hi i'm supposedly jared ceo and co-founder of status i i don't really have an active role in identity but i advocate the position that creating systems that don't rely on identity is the way that the individual will ever have a self-sovereign identity um i think the path of starting any identity system is fraught with inherent challenges um and the technical advances of um proposed self-sovereign identity systems that i've seen so far um are unlikely to escape some of the pitfalls of present day identity systems um i know my position is somewhat futile as the kind of fetish for identity goes far back as like theocratic societies or the bronze age um you know showing this sort of desire for controlled mechanisms of identity formation through moral codes of conduct um and well not much has really changed really i mean just look at kyc or any big tap platform um or even mass identity roll out systems like uh india or china um so yeah all right on the one hand you can see that identity systems would be ruled rolled out and how how they're employed on mass scale and then on the other hand um there's problems inherent in any identity system even self-sovereign ones such as normal conditioning authentication and access control which leads to like the propensity for the need for a singular identity and worse feature creep that moves any identity system outside of its original context as it reaches wider adoption it may even surpass the intentions of um of the the creator's intentions so yeah okay thanks all so uh we can see we have a bunch of uh different viewpoints here represented um i guess i'll start by opening it up um jared left us with um some of the downsides of past identity systems um and even some downsides to um the potential of some self-sovereign systems that people are building here um i'd love to open it up and just hear how people are thinking about and skipping ahead a little bit but what are the biggest challenges that you each see really specifically and what are the most promising things out there right now to address some of those challenges i guess i'll go silence um so i think one of the biggest challenges and i think jared addressed it kind of from a high level is the notion of repeatability how do you actually maintain state and an id um how do you think about an id system is it really just about creating that one id rule them all for each individual and entity or is it just a a notion of a network of identifiers that can help with supply chain work i think that's what folks have been working on i know in the media space the biggest question has always been how do you tag content i know ceramic is thinking about things like that but how do you content how do you tag images how do you own your own creation and how do you follow it throughout the world that still hasn't been solved at scale and then of course there's a user question as well which is separate and also linked to that so i think that there's technology that's being worked on like dids and vcs uh with veramo of the open source platform we're trying to push out um that issues it's nbc's but the overall underlying context and question of how do we solve all those problems has not been solved yet but i think this group is crypto universe can help solve it so i mean um i i certainly um lean towards self-sovereign identity systems that are kind of graph based um but i mean there are inherent issues with sort of networks of nodes um due to the nature of like trust transit between those nodes and power laws um so so and that's not necessarily uh inherently bad right um and nothing i'm only raising uh concerns or questions or challenges um but what i see is this kind of a functional limitation uh built into into that kind of paradigm uh because you're going to end up having quote unquote super nodes um that uh essentially have a sort of social capital or trust capital um that accrues with them um and therefore there is a sort of practical limitation uh on how sovereign your identity is uh because you're dependent on some of those claims especially if they're yeah yeah so i think um jerry what i'm hearing you talk about very generally is um when you're in a decentralized and networked system no matter how you design it there might be ways that private information is leaking out and can be correlated no matter how private you might actually make the data um are you actually practically able to design a system that um that that can't be observed in ways that maybe might be dangerous um and curious from from other panelists who i know are quite concerned with privacy and we've all heard some examples of both the catastrophes of how it's done today in web 2 and with some more country based identity systems that are more universal you know we all talk about the desire for interoperability and for decentralized and networked identity but how do you see being able to protect privacy in different ways going forward yeah i'd love to chime in here um i think that oftentimes when we talk about identity we think of it as like this kind of singular entity like a single person has a single identity um and there's definitely use cases for that and i know that like some of us here are working on use cases for that and you know there's very good reasons that we want to um have some like persistent and um reliable identity that we can attach to a person in the real world um but i do think that also comes with limitations like the ones that jared khan is kind of speaking about so like there's still need for um anonymity there's still need for being pseudonymous um and i think that we can't just constrain our concept of an identity to like one soul thing like it has to be um identity has to be flexible in nature but it also has to be like fragmented in nature so like i should be able to have a specific identity on a specific platform and choose to have a different type of identity that has different data associated to it on a different platform um and if i don't have that ability then that's where we land in these in these really bad spots where we are now where it's like you know i i don't have a fresh start um for applications so like this history that maybe um i don't agree with or for some reason want to leave behind it gets carried with me everywhere um but also uh we end up with like uh these kind of like super nodes right we end up with people who have established credibility in one area that doesn't necessarily translate to another area like maybe they shouldn't have established credibility on some other platform um so i think the fragmentation aspect of an identity is really really key in addition to like the decentralization aspects adam i'm curious for your take here given you are really focused on a solution that might not be uh legal identity but really does require just a single identity how do you think about this challenge yeah right so i think that uh bringing something like a social security number issued by a government online is really bad really bad idea it's it's horrible that we've done that um i definitely agree that you don't you want to avoid this unwanted linkage between all these different applications you don't want to have an identifier that links you across a bunch of applications where you may not want to be linked you probably don't want to be linked so we totally need to avoid that and i think we have the the the cryptographic legos to be able to accomplish this i don't think that we need to to to link people's identities together in distant different systems and i think we can actually accomplish what we're trying to do with bright id specifically which is to allow you to prove that you're unique in a system we can do this without having uh passing around an identifier that's that's going to link you between systems and so we have to do that we have to consider privacy first um we have the technology to be able to do this so i i think it's achievable that's that's our thesis anyway with bright id we'll see i mean there's there's smart governments out there and corporations that are going to do things like take an anonymous social graph and um you know try to overlay it with other dna you know other de-anonymized social graphs and and and expose people that way so we're always going to have to be on our toes we're going to have to be uh you know constantly making breakthroughs but i think it's i think it's a challenge that we need to address bright idea is a great sort of uh a great system i really like what you guys are doing there um i'm also a proponent of um any sort of claims based system um especially if it's using zero knowledge proof to only selectively reveal one normalization or one sort of property of your identity um but only that and only the proof that you have that claim um i think that's that's a really great path forward and especially if you extend it with sort of vitalik's notion of yes i know this or i know my private key which means that you can well it means that if that person tries to share that particular proof um then the the person they share it with will will view it as potentially a fraudulent claim because uh obviously the sharer knows their private key anyway um brian i'm curious for your view because um you've written um a lot on what we can do with reputation when we have good systems and good primitives for identity and data and web three and then you're also you're building an app um and you're building a you know with a lot of these pieces that others are how do you think about the ability to consume different pieces of data and i you know probably wanting to consume more data rather than less to make judgments on reputation and deliver a better experience but while also protecting privacy yeah it's a it's a really interesting question i think for just a breath of it i think we're one of the one of the only applications in crypto right now that actually have like identity at like some meaningful scale like at a baseline we take the transaction history to define the reputation of a user and use our own subjective reputation system to kind of base uh kind of the value of that user in itself and we uh it's one that we integrate with prodigy and we're going to be integrating ceramic um let's do a different identity language uh to guarantee that the user is unique and also for the user to plug in to kind of have their different credentials um but we're definitely looking into sort of this this privacy aspect right i think bellagi has a very thesis identity of just having forms of identity one more like the public facing identity and one more of us unanimous identity i think we're very much gonna have that that divergence kind of in the next 12 to 24 months here where we have this public facing identity that's getting a lot of uh opportunity for decentralized work um you kind of already see this like retroactive air drops like if you receive the uni airdrop or donated bitcoin grants that that kind of gives you um some opportunity for taking air drops so that kind of has a basis for reputation of like what kind of contributor you are to a crypto network um so we're kind of taking that one step further and saying well if you've done you know 10 to 12 tasks across these different crypto networks that might that might entitle you to some future opportunity um using that transaction history so if your reputation layer um so you know there's going to be those benefits of having your public facing identity um but the privacy aspect is kind of like a whole different ballgame um something they'll have to kind of tackle in the past so we're kind of you know focused on the public facing identity at first but yeah definitely still thinking about how we can incorporate privacy in each of this yeah so i think that's a great jumping off point i'm curious to hear views from others so if we can't achieve a decentralized identity system that um that mitigates some of the challenges that jared and others have called out so let's let's put that as our goal we can come back to how that might happen what does that enable um that we haven't seen before that the developers who are watching this might be able to build with both for web3 experiences that we haven't seen in our ecosystem yet but also that might be better than what people are used to with kind of traditional web apps what are you guys excited about um this this stack of technologies enabling go ahead things that got me into this space was uh the need for um governance that happens can happen on a global scale that can unite humanity and get us working together on problems that but uh we shouldn't have to bring in uh you know that that should just require us to assert that hey i'm a human being and i only exist once i'm not here attacking your system with with uh you know multiple accounts and so uh once we have that basic piece we can unlock uh all kinds of new forms of governance a lot of these a lot of the really interesting things that are coming out of the radical exchange movement are are types of governance that work really well if you can um they kind of spread the the the voting power um more fairly but it really only works well if you can um show that that that you're unique if you can prove to the the system that you're unique so that's that's interesting also all kinds of um benefits that that are the you know accruing to humanity that are basic rights of humanity that you want to extend to every single person just based on um your ability to to raise your hand and show that you're here um we should be able to to extend those so i think that it's it's uh it takes a big out of um out of the the existing like nation state uh problematic structure that we have this this world of empires that that we're built on and allows us to turn more into this this global uh system where we we we just don't need a lot of that stuff anymore so i look forward to that yeah me too i mean the the internet and more particularly the kind of technologies that we're all developing here um they represent like a new domain of sovereignty to me um not really different so to sort of like uh international maritime law or something but at the same time we have this kind of like uh balkanization of the internet you know where we're having attempts by nation-state actors to um try and translate their uh national boundaries into into virtual space you know china is doing an amazing job at sort of um digital nationalism um but you know this whole idea of self-sovereignty you know it can really be um taken back to these sort of lock-in ideas and sort of human rights ideas i guess what i find so compelling about these systems is that um they have like these different uh sort of concepts of in individual control um over your you know your right your private data specifically um being identity related um as i said before the right to selectively reveal yourself um the capacity to choose where your data is stored right and that's really important when we're talking about centralized data silos and the data abuse issues that come with that yeah and i guess the ability to provide what you need to provide to those who need to validate it without relying on any um centralized intermediary who can then control your identity um yeah i would say um kind of taking off the loss stuff that you said um for me the really exciting thing is breaking down those silos um i think that a lot of innovation is restricted right now because we have a handful of companies basically um that have access to all of our data um and you know it prevents it prevents a lot of innovation and i think um like that's kind of the challenge that we're up against like in the web 3 ecosystem to be frank like we we have to to kind of find a way to to be competitive um i think that like the products that we kind of bring to the table um well like naturally and already are naturally driving adoption so oftentimes like people talk about you know adoption being kind of the big blockchain or web 3 like issue um i i think that like today in 2021 now um we've gotten to a point point where we see like you know that we can actually create real value in the space um so now it's really about like us kind of working together in order to make that realized um and i think that by creating these identity systems that are interoperable so as we're mentioning like you know integrating ceramic idx and um bright id for example like creating a system like that is is just so powerful because like that gives us kind of a fighting chance um to to like actually make web 3 a real thing um and i think like not only breaking down the silos but like giving users control over the identity um is like it's helpful because it's like okay yeah we want like people to have um the ability to like you know put things where they want them um revoke things if they want them but even like broader than that just like the education piece like they're like people don't really understand how any of this stuff works like in web 2. web 3 like the transparency that web 3 gives you is like so so powerful so i'm really excited for um for users to to now like have that control and start understanding like how do all these pieces fit together and then like being able to like give us more feedback because if you don't have like enough information about the system like how can you really say to someone like yeah this is working for me or this is not like we have such um opaque kind of metrics that we use in web 2 to determine if something is working um and i think like the the really cool thing about about identity and web 3 is like now users can actually understand what they're doing and have more of a say um so that is also kind of like tying into the governance piece too like they can actually have a say in like what's happening how these protocols are interacting if this is good like moving us forward in the direction that we want or not um so yeah those are those are things that excite me about it well it also includes user education because a lot of users web 2 is where data became the new oil right and it was blocked off and taken away and monetized by large corporations for their benefit and users didn't really know what was going on they had no idea how valuable their own personal data was and so i think it behooves all of us i love val what you said in regards to us all building together we have to otherwise we become the same thing that web 2 was which are these oil fields all to on themselves we can't do that so to democratize the user experience and the user ownership of their data we have to all work together to educate users as to why it's so important as well that's very well said um so lots of different viewpoints i'm going to risk turning from lots of head nodding to some shaking trying to summarize a little bit before this last question it seems like despite different concerns and despite different focuses everybody agrees that the information um that is attached to identities we all want that to be in a more shared and interoperable space than what we have in web 2 today with these empires and oil fields we want to make sure that that information can only be disclosed in certain situations it's not easy to see or correlate by anyone and so the the concepts around selective disclosure and privacy um are critical that we simultaneously need to be able to make use of some of that information and the connections to do things like powerful reputations and proof of unique personhood so that we can actually govern and get great experiences out of these decentralized networks while at the same time being able to represent ourselves in different ways we have jared here switching faces every few seconds to give us a demonstration of that in real time so that's a lot to ask for and these solutions i think are coming together now and of course not complete and there's still work to do but if you're talking to a bunch of developers who are building things and maybe seeing these nascent solutions and thinking maybe i'm just going to use keys or maybe i'm just going to use user tables on my server and kind of going to progressive decentralization route what would you kind of advise them about how to think about identity early on what they're building um i mean i i would look um look into both india's adar system and and china's social credit system right um that is a really really good sort of uh sort of thing not to do right and you want to understand how those things come around right so what's so amazing or or or inspiring is that um like china's social credit system isn't really just um normalizing a sort of moral code of conduct but it's kind of a grand social sort of technical engineering really um aimed to eliminate the untrustworthy elements in their society by very material system of rewards and punishments that has real world effects so if you can avoid that good stuff yeah i think starting from the the building blocks like thinking about deads vc's verified credentials thinking about ways to build from the ground up and i agree with you jared i remember sitting in brussels in front of uh european parliament and we talked about identity and the first thing one of the emps said remy p said i like china i'm like no no this is not that's not work so you know again i keep going back to the social responsibility piece but it really behooves us as we build these things and as we build the building block the legos if you will um legos are painful if you step on them so we have to be very careful on how we build these things and again let's build them together otherwise we're gonna have things like china and other but start small and then build up and learn from the mistakes that were made i really look forward to the um the identity wallets becoming uh like a normal thing like it's something that everyone has you have a uh people are starting to get used to having wallets to hold their cryptocurrency i really look forward to it being a normal thing and people being used to have have a wallet and love what status is doing in this regard um you have and three box of course and uh where you have you have a wallet that that uh also contains things about your identity just like just like a real wallet um in real life i think people understand that physical analog and so i don't think i i think if we can if we can do it right um it can be something that's easy to use and i i think this could be the year if not this year next year where we really start seeing user-friendly identity wallets and they start to be really become a thing for people so i really look forward to that so if you you know start using things like three box uh status because those are gonna those are gonna become big thank you thanks for the endorsement yeah i think um i would add to that uh like from the kind of like developer perspective it's so much easier one it's so much easier than like rolling your own you know off in authorization um and and just like repeating that code for every single app it's that's such a pain um so so using kind of just like client-side authentication is like so so easy um so that's one thing but like more broadly about identity um i think it comes down to like the network effects aspect right it's like it's hard to bootstrap a company um it's hard to to start something new and to grow a network um like based on the structures that we have in the industry and in society it's just very difficult to do that um when you're tapped into web3 you kind of get access to that network without you know having to do all like having to pay that huge upfront cost um so i think that's like one major thing is like we kind of share in these network effects we contribute to them but we also get to share and benefit from them um and i think that that's really exciting for you know new projects and i think what it does is it kind of like pushes the boundaries for us again like going back to what i said earlier about innovation like it kind of forces us to be more creative about what value we're actually giving to users it's not just like hey person who can raise the most money wins right it's like no you actually have to like create something that users care about um and and you know give to the system and the system will give back to you so cool um i think that is a great place to end i think our time is just about up um i think we are the last uh panel of the week is that right jonathan that's correct all right last panel uh so thank you all this was a lot of fun thanks for having me nice day yeah thank you thank you so much