[Cryptography] Identity

[iang]

On 12/12/2022 04:17, Peter Fairbrother wrote:

> Peter Gutman's recent post reminded me of another naming question:
>
> What do you call an identity which is not linked (or linkable to?), 
> but whose actions are controlled by, a real person?


Anonymous.

(Eg, if it is controlled but you have no visibility over the person, you 
also don't know when the person has handed it over to another.)

(Leaving aside forgery for a while - good not to bias the terminology 
with "everything must be cryptographically proven...")


> Peter Fairbrother
>
> (a real person)


If you have a name, then you're linkable.  Technically that would be 
nymous - has a name.

If you have a public key, which represents a 
cryptographically-provable-not-human-recognisable name, then we 
generally say it is psuedonymous.

Another related but orthogonal term is 'traceable' which refers to the 
transactions between nyms.

Eg Bitcoin is psuedonymous & traceable.

Whereas Chaumian blinding is untraceable but implementations are 
typically psuedonymous and indeed DigiCash was nymous, whereas Zcash is not.

iang (a nym, subject to occasional collisions)



PS; I could be wrong in this, but I suspect there is no real dictionary, 
and many are wrong :)