đź’ˇ Notes on the crypto identity space #1 [April]

Developers Education
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This is a copy of a Github Gist for ease of reference. These are incomplete notes on what is on my radar in the identity space. They are mostly notes-to-self, but I’m sharing them to encourage learning in public.

:bulb: Notes on the crypto identity space #1 [April]

Celo-specific:

Crypto-wide:

  • ethers.js adds support for EIP-3668 CCIP Read (formerly Durin standard)
    • TLDR: this unlocks interesting off-chain resolution possibilities (notably on L2s, but any chain or other web2 storage place really)

    • CCIP read adds a method for clients to fetch data off-chain. It first calls a contract that returns a URL & data. Next, it makes a HTTP request with the specified data that lets you fetch any info. Data can be verified with the callback function on the on-chain contract. ~ :link: Source: Twitter

  • Coinbase rumoured to be playing with ENS offchain lookups:
  • ENS 3 and 4 digit domains sale (e.g 1234.eth) lead to large revenue spike: ~$6.7m in registration and renewal fees in April
  • A case for using non-transferable NFTs vs verifiable credentials

Things I’m learning about and don’t fully understand yet (if you’re interested):

  • TLDR on Sismo [:link: Source: Twitter]
    • goal is dissociate data and data source using “zero knowledge attestations”
    • Example: 0x1 has 3 tx and 1 snapshot vote / 0x2 has 2tx and 2 gitcoin donations.
    • You can create an attestations of the type: “did 5 (or less if you chose) tx”, “did 2 (or less) donations”, “did 1 snapshot vote”, without leaking the source accounts 0x1 or 0x2.
    • the user that owns 0x1 and 0x2 (“source accounts”) choses a destination 0x3 (“attestation owner”) they also own

    • Similar to tornado cash but for data

    • :link: Further reading: What is Sismo | Part 1 : Zk Badges
  • TLDR on ERC1155 [:link: Source: Article]
    • Is an improved NFT token standard (basically extends capability of ERC721 NFTs)
    • Allows you to deploy 1 smart contract and manage multiple NFTs/other token
    • Allows you to give various tokens their own attributes (in the same contract):
      • some can be fungible like ERC20 tokens (cUSD), i.e. not unique, can be divided, can be exchanged for another, like money
      • some can be non-fungible like ERC721 NFTs, i.e. unique, independent, different properties, not interchangeable
      • some can be semi-fungible, like a store coupon (fungible/exchangeable: before it’s redeemed), zero value when redeemed (non-fungible/not tradeable).
    • other benefits relating to trading (too detailed for here)

:speech_balloon: This is a standing invitation: if you want to talk crypto (in particular identity), I want to talk to you.
My Twitter and Github handle is @arthurgousset.

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With regard to nomspace and ens domains, my main gripes with them is that if you buy a bunch of crypto domains, normal web2 users cannot access them. Nobody’s gonna change their DNS resolver, so I ended up building a custom DNS bridge server that re-roots crypto domains to my own subdomain.

We’ll do something similar for nomspace and bridge all of the nom space domains at *.nom.space so that any actual DNS records tied to the nom domain can actually resolve correctly from normal Chrome.

E.g. foobar.nom.space resolves the DNS records tied to foobar.nom, so you can actually have proper A/CNAME records set up on the .nom NFT.

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Interesting, thanks for sharing! :pray: Noob question, I’m not 100% following when you say:

I ended up building a custom DNS bridge server that re-roots crypto domains to my own subdomain

What exactly does a “custom DNS bridge” mean and accomplish? How does this affect the UX for everyday web2 users?

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So lets say that I buy a crypto domain (which is just a ENS nft token underneath), and I start setting the normal Web2.0 DNS records onto my crypto domain. (Records Reference | Unstoppable Domains Developer Portal)

If you owned a normal web2 domain like celo.org, you go to DNS and set an A record that points to a normal IP address. Visitors who go to Celo.org will see the website.

If you set the DNS record on your crypto NFT domain, and then visitor go to your crypto domain, it goes nowhere, because the crypto TLD are not real Web2.0 TLD.

The breakage right now is that your normal web2 DNS servers do not serve up crypto domain records.
There’s a way to bridge the crypto NFT domains to web2 DNS system if you “re-root” the TLD at web2 domain.

For example, if I have monkey.nom from nom space, then with a custom DNS bridge server, we can re-root monkey.nom to monkey.nom.space in Web2 DNS system.

You can set DNS records on your monkey.nom NFT, and anyone who go to monkey.nom.space will resolve your DNS records, and it bridges your NFT domain to Web2 domain.

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As a side note, even though Unstoppable domain claim to have registered 2m+ crypto domains, if you index all of the domains, there’s only like less than .05% of the Unstoppable domains that actually have a real crypto DNS record set.

People are using Unstoppable Domain mostly for name squatting and as a simple wallet address alias. Hardly anyone’s gone ahead and actually using their crypto domains as “domains” in the web2 sense, and I think it’s primarily because it’s not accessible in a normal Web2 browser. Brave and Opera has some built in support for crypto TLD, but normal people just use Safari / Chrome / Firefox.

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