Hi Phillip,

The two drafts mentioned by Vladimir were building blocks for something called ID4me - https://id4me.org/.

The project is not that alive anymore as it was lacking adoption, everyone looking more into blockchain identity solutions at the time.

Documentation is open and available https://gitlab.com/ID4me/documentation . Maybe useful for your work. I'm happy to talk about it in BKK if you are around.

Kind Regards,

Pawel

On 26.01.25 17:00, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
Well useful prior art. I suspect that there are several folk looking at what is being built and working out how to backdate a claim with a continuation of a patent already in progress - as happened many times with Web tech.

The question everyone seems to be asking is 'why this way, why now'.

I think the answer is that developing an identity scheme is much easier technical problem than folk imagine, anyone can propose an identifier and resolution scheme and everyone did and so we ended up with dozens of schemes on the table and the whole problem was to pick just one. And that is why the BlueSky adoption of one scheme and getting 29 million users is a game changer: there is critical mass behind that approach and that is vastly more significant than any technical concerns.

DNS handles also meet the critical criteria for success - they are genuinely open, human comprehensible and can be internationalized.



On Sun, Jan 26, 2025 at 2:35 AM Vladimir Dzhuvinov / Connect2id <vladi...@connect2id.com> wrote:

    Hello Phillip,

    In the late 2010s DENIC (the .de registrar) worked on a PoC for
    DNS-based discovery and client registration for OpenID Connect.

    They produced two drafts which you can find here:


    "An Architecture for a Public Identity Infrastructure Based on DNS
    and OpenID Connect"

    
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-bertola-dns-openid-pidi-architecture-01


    "OpenID Connect DNS-based Discovery"

    https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-sanz-openid-dns-discovery-01


    Vladimir Dzhuvinov

    On 21/01/2025 19:15, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
    As some of you are probably aware, BlueSky makes use of OAuth2 as
    their primary authentication mechanism with one important
    divergence from the established use pattern: account identifiers
    are DNS handles.

    I have been looking at this approach in some detail and I think
    that just as 90% of the Web was not new but contained the missing
    pieces that completed the puzzle, the use of DNS handles may
    represent a similar step forward for OAuth and much much more.

    As I see it, there are two types of DNS handle, personal
    registration handles under a name held by the user. I have
    hallambaker.com <http://hallambaker.com> so I issued
    myself @phill.hallambaker.com <http://phill.hallambaker.com>.
    Most users don't have a DNS name so they make use of 'at will'
    handles that are provided by a service provider. Right now, that
    is pretty much limited to Blue Sky (I also
    have @hallam.bsky.social). But what if the use of DNS handles
    became the standard way to do OpenID instead of being limited to
    an account with the provider cartel? What if I could use my DNS
    handle to log in anywhere?


    I have been working on this and have developed code that puts up
    a social media forum entirely disconnected from BlueSky and the
    ATprotocol but allows use of the same handles. So once I have the
    site finished, you will be able to comment on my personal blog at
    https://phill.hallambaker.com/ using the same account you use for
    BlueSky. And you will be able to comment on the specs and join in
    private forum discussions at mplace2.social.

    And when I started, that was really all I was looking to do plus
    work out how to use the same mechanism with the end-to-end secure
    personal communications scheme I have developed. If Alice is
    using @alice.example.com <http://alice.example.com> for social
    media, isn't that the obvious handle to use to reach her for
    direct messaging? And if she accepts a contact exchange,
    shouldn't I also be able to send her email and drop files? how
    about using the same handle to set up a MOQ video chat?


    What this gets us to is a place where there is a big incentive
    for users to get themselves a multi-purpose DNS handle for their
    personal internet identity. Ideally of course, this is a personal
    registration allowing the user to change their service
    provider(s) at will without switching costs. But even an at-will
    handle is making them independent of the provider cartel.

    And we can go further, I have code that automates management of
    IoT devices under either type of handle. So I can buy a coffee
    pot, onboard it to my personal set of devices and set it up with
    the DNS record entries and certificates to reach it as
    coffee.hallambaker.com <http://coffee.hallambaker.com> - all by
    scanning the QR code and giving it the name 'coffee'.

    As with the Web, 90% of what we need to make this happen already
    exists - OAuth, OpenID, DNS Update, ACME, I am just writing a
    profile that takes very large specs and chops out bits to choose
    a single way to do things. As you would expect, I am filling in
    some of the gaps using code I have written for the Mesh but we
    could use Signal protocol instead - if the provider was willing
    to open up its walled garden.


    I believe the above represents a compelling value proposition.
    But as I got into documenting, I started to find more and more
    opportunity.

    Let us imagine that we rejigger the current ATprotocol spec for
    DNS handles slightly so that we make the authorization service a
    first class party rather than being assumed to be a service
    provided by a particular content provider. Let us also give it a
    new name (I am currently using @nywhere) under which this
    particular log in trope can be recognized and assume that it is
    widely supported as a means of logging into content providers
    across the Internet.

    In that scenario, I could log into my authentication provider
    once in the morning and that would give me access to all the
    content properties I need access to across the Web. And that
    provides an antidote for the current trend towards absurd and
    obnoxious demands for 2FA to access assets that are ultimately
    worthless. No, a crappy Web store does not need me to create an
    account for me to browse their wares and it certainly doesn't
    need to demand me respond to an email callback.

    If I have a single authentication provider, then it can
    authenticate me once in the morning and I am good to go for the
    day. And we don't need to be limited to the limited capabilities
    of authentication schemes that work across HTML/HTTP. We can use
    biometrics, etc. etc.

    This gives us a route to get rid of passwords that is actually
    deployable.


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