(2021-03-31) Inventories Not Identities

Kei Kreutler: Inventories, Not Identities. Why multisigs are the future of online accounts.

Along with other promises, the web suggested itself as an experimental prosthetic, through which different forms of identity could be explored, and individuals or groups could choose pseudonymous identity.

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.

Today, instead, we see social platform monopolies like Facebook enforcing a real-name policy, which insists individual users register with their legal identities

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.

we still have the ability to imagine more

One of these tools is multi-signature accounts, which are accounts that can provide identity collections for individuals, groups, or organizations

The narrative of ownership is integral to decentralized financial technology.

Blockchain protocols plus private key cryptography or other wallet solutions introduce the ability to have full possession of digital assets, without having to trust a third party. Hence the terms “self-custodial” or the more culturally pervasive “self-sovereign”

In the same way that digital assets can be self-custodial, many people present blockchain-based accounts as a way to “own” your identity. The impetus for self-custodial identity, however, is not unique to crypto culture, and it can be seen in earlier, ongoing initiatives such as the Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) project by the W3C

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. The tools used to create Ethereum-based accounts are often referred to as crypto wallet applications. The most popular among them, such as the Metamask wallet, allow you to connect to Ethereum applications and even some web 2.0 platforms like Discourse forums.

what could serve as an identity within an application can be provided in multiple technical formats through a blockchain-based account

There are already implementations using NFTs to provide decentralized identity by the important and pioneering 3Box team.

by using verifiable credential tools such as zero knowledge proofs, a subject can verify they possess personal data without having to publicly reveal it

Ultimately, what the narrative of self-sovereign identity misses, is that identity is always inherently relational, defined in relation to environment, authority, and self. The idea of owning one’s identity begins to appear an oxymoron. There are important projects like CirclesUBI (built on Gnosis Safe contracts), BrightID, and others that provide a relational web of trust solution for decentralized verification of unique identity

It’s worth noting that Ethereum-based accounts provide an implicit web of trust model, because by default, an address’ network of transactions are public.

While not guaranteeing anonymity, pseudonyms are one key component to preserving this flexibility.

In his talk, Balaji Srinivasan suggests a separation of concerns between real names, earning, and speaking

Since the web has never been separate from “real life,” it is a primary site for identity formulation. In Being Your Selves: Identity R&D on alt Twitter, Aaron Z. Lewis explores how an ecology of pseudonymous Twitter accounts differentiate, integrate, and extend notions of self. ((2020-01-23) Lewis Being Your Selves Identity RD On Alt Twitter)

Rather than an escape from self, alt identities “teach you that your legal identity is also a kind of mask — an ever-evolving ‘montage of loosely assembled parts’.”

What we need, then, is a technical stack that supports not an identity, but a collection of identities to navigate the highly varied contexts of web 3.0.

Multi-signature wallets have become important infrastructure for blockchain-based accounts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisignature

they can require multiple key signatures to confirm a transaction. Keys can be other wallet accounts. While typically described as requiring M out of n signatures,

multi-signature accounts allow cooperatives to hold resources in common, and their bylaws can be easily supported by a multi-signature account’s intrinsic features. To allocate resources to a new venture, a vote by cooperative members with simple majority in favor may be required. If each member is an owner of the multi-signature account, a transfer could be executed if a simple majority of the total owners confirm it. Even further, members of an organization can delegate their votes to other members or delegate even to other organizations represented by multi-signature accounts, easily allowing for liquid democracy voting schemes.

Today, multi-signature accounts are already widely used for collective profit-sharing.

Multi-signature accounts provide collectives especially impactful leverage even in less traditional settings. While the imaginary potential behind decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) blooms wildly, one straightforward way to describe them could be voluntary associations in favor of digital cooperativism.

Because they support transparency, modular permissions, and collective ownership, multi-signature accounts have become the operating system for DAOs.

the Gnosis Safe Multisig is already used by several projects underpinning the decentralized web, allowing users to maintain a DAO-owned Radicle repository for decentralized code collaboration, sign up for the mutual credit system CirclesUBI, and fund public goods on Gitcoin.

Composable identity approaches identity as inherently relational, providing modular tools for individuals, groups, and organizations to present themselves within technical systems.

Another name for web 3.0 could be the metaverse.

*One can see the role of web 3.0, however, in one of the core attributes of the metaverse cited by Ball:

“Offer unprecedented interoperability*

What we will see with the metaverse is not merely one persistent virtual world but interwoven many, that will increasingly merge with the whole of the web.

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 identities as assets, complete with cross-platform and cross-game narratives.

“At the heart of the internet’s psyche,” as strategist Jay Springett says, “is the raid.” A term used by guilds in massive multiplayer online games like Eve Online, the raid is usually a collective action by a group of players to accomplish a goal

Whereas multiplayer game guilds have, in the past, had to bootstrap methods for distribution of resources gained in a raid or, like the clans of Fortnite today, start companies, multi-signature accounts provide accessible infrastructure for coordinating groups from the start

At their core, multi-signature accounts enable composable identity on web 3.0. When we approach identity as an inventory holding multiple contexts, we can expansively navigate the highly varied use cases of a peer-to-peer web, and reimagine what we are. By reevaluating identity in our technical systems, we can also fundamentally remap agency in the political sphere to come.