[Cryptography] A naming and key distribution infrastructure for the Mesh

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 11:25 PM Patrick Chkoreff <pc at fexl.com> wrote:

> Bill Frantz wrote on 9/23/20 4:50 PM:
>
> > It sounds like we're getting into Zooko's triangle territory. The
> > general solution to this dillema is Pet Names. A pet name only has local
> > significance. My address book is full of pet names, which resolve to
> > real email addresses, postal addresses, and telephone numbers.
>
> Yes, as I was driving around thinking about Phillip's post, I thought
> that I'd want my name to be 10 random digits, like a phone number, e.g.
> @071-449-6372.  Then my friends would just map "Patrick" to that in
> their contact lists.
>

Underneath, your name is a sequence of 24 random Base32 characters... That
is the fingerprint of your public key with a work factor of 2^112.

Thats an OK way to label things internally. But it really isn't something
most users will find usable. And thats fine. This can be a naming
infrastructure that is only used by the 99% not the technorati.

The naming is just a side benefit from the need to map profile fingerprints
to service providers so that you can change your service provider at any
time with zero switching cost. If you don't want to use it, fine. I might
even support profiles that don't have an alias for free.

But if this succeeds, there will be plenty of people who will pay silly
prices just to have a short name. And whatever their motives, that money
will go to fund the development of the Mesh into the future. And probably
quite a bit else.
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