[Cryptography] Eudaemon: A peer-to-peer electronic identity system

[Ralf Senderek]

On Wed, 26 Apr 2023, Nico Williams wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 10:10:02PM +0200, Ralf Senderek wrote:
>> On Mon, 24 Apr 2023, Agathos wrote:
>>>> What do you envision is in the "identity and associated data" ?
>>>
>>> Any data that is important to yourself and/or your peers. Direct
>>> messages, group messages, key backups, arbitrary data backups, secrets,
>>> personal attributes, trust topology and even media. Though I would not
>>> recommend dumping an entire family video album on the current prototype
>>> system.
>>
>> So all this data is committed to the personal blockchain in clear text?
>> Do you really think this is a good idea?
>
> The data that goes into the blockchain has to be public -if the
> blockchain is public anyways-, but that data can be ciphertext.
>
> So what's the use of publishing a blockchain of ciphertext?  Well, you
> can use that commit to plaintext to be revealed later by revealing the
> decryption key(s).  And you can use this to share data with others who
> have the decryption keys already.
>

Well, that the people who use the blockchain already *have* the
decryption keys and don't get them through the blockchain is
a very good idea.

But if they share encrypted messages the blockchain only solves
the ciphertext distribution problem for the N people and it makes
up for a giant store of metadata that records interactions for
eternity.

     --ralf