Decentralizing digital identity trust with domain and protocol links

Onions in the ATmosphere: Decentralizing Trust in Identity

Cryptography and SecuritySocial and Information Networks

Summary

Web users often rely on domain names or special addresses (onion addresses) to identify websites securely, but connecting these identifiers can be vulnerable to issues like blocking or spying. The authors explore ways to link domain names and decentralized digital identities in a manner that is self-authenticating, meaning they prove who they are without needing a central authority. They also suggest trusting identity information based on the context and relevance of who vouches for it, instead of depending on traditional centralized systems. This work combines these ideas to help make online identity verification more robust and less controlled by single points of failure.

What this means in practice

  • For internet service providers: Improve domain and network services by integrating decentralized identity checks that rely on contextual trust rather than central authorities.
  • For blockchain developers: Design decentralized applications that combine onion addresses with decentralized identifiers for stronger user identity management without central control.

A position paper. It proposes an approach and reports no results.

Authors

Paul Syverson, Nick Gerakines

Abstract

Multiple approaches have been implemented for identities that associate meaningful identifiers, such as domain names, with self-authenticating identifiers, such as onion addresses. While these approaches offer various advantages both from identifier meaningfulness and from identifier self-authentication, identifier association itself is subject to blocking, hijack, fingerprinting, and other forms of surveillance and manipulation. So too are the resources associated with an identity comprising a meaningful identifier and a self-authenticating identifier. This paper describes ongoing work on two such approaches to self-authenticating meaningful identity (SAMI): associating a registered domain name with an onion address (onion association) and associating an atproto handle with a decentralized identifier (DID association). We present both the application of already implemented and published means of secure onion association to DID association and the combination of both in a single identity. Finally, we describe grounding identity association and integrity in contextual trust, wherein trusting attestations of identity relies on contextual relevance of an attestor to the identity rather than relying only on structural authority, for example as embodied in the traditional centralized infrastructure.
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