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Sujal
Sujal

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Identity: A cryptographic tale

Identity?

  • You want to use some online service... you put your email and a password... that's stored in some database..
  • Now every time you want to access the service you put in the same thing and you get access ..
  • That email and password combination stored in a company's database is your identity for that service...
  • That's the web2 world..

Where is the Problem?

  • You don't own it...it's stored in some database
  • It's centralized...if a company chooses to not allow you to use it you can't..
  • There is no true logical association here...it's just a company storing the credentials and allows you to use the service if they want...(they may deny even if you have correct credentials..)

How cryptography solves this?

  • Here we don't put trust in some third party company but we put trust in code + math...
  • We have two keys : One public, One private
  • Public key can be shared any where we want
  • Private key is our source of identity...we keep it secret
  • someone with private key can sign the content of a message and it can be verified with it's corresponding public key
  • The whole trust lies in the maths and code...
  • It's a permission-less system..

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