The Currency of Identifiers

1. The Currency of Identifiers This blog is inspired by “Beg, Borrow, or Steal” a painting by the artist Brian Phillips, which is what we have to do to re-claim our personal data that has been “crowd-sourced.” A new technology has emerged recently which leverages the resiliency of the Internet to enable distributed transactions: bit Coin. One of the features of this technology is that it enables me to tell that a coin has been transferred–that a transaction has occurred. After a period of time, enough nodes can confirm this transaction to give me confidence that the transaction is now globally known. I have proposed to the XDI.ORG trustees that one option is to restructure the XRI global registry based on an “xdiCoin” based solution (see the OX wiki for a slightly expanded discussion of xdiCoin.) A DNS name registration system has even been developed based on Bit coin called name Coin, which provides evidence that a digital currency’s use as a registry is possible (in lieu of a central ICANN-style registry). A coin represents a globally resolvable identifier. It is equivalent to a DNS top level domain, like “.com” or “.ca” If you do not have a coin, you can only be addressed in the context of another coin. Like a dollar bill, the coin has a serial number.

2. Unlike a dollar bill, it also has a user settable name. If you like, you can choose any name that hasn’t already been chosen by someone on the Internet. There is a different currency for people and other entities like businesses or organizations. Active directory single sign on server is a currency that has intrinsic value. This is why websites want to know who you are. In the old days, websites would verify your email. But more information is more valuable, so nowadays, it is not uncommon to be asked by websites to provide a mobile phone number to sign up for their “free” services. Google will even verify your postal address. There is a clear market for verified attributes. The more verified attributes we are able to correlate to identifiers, the more value can be obtained (hence Face book’s optimistic market valuation.) If identity is a currency, how can it be inter-operable? Currencies enable financial markets to inter-operate. Could identity currency enable websites to inter-operate? Coins take the complexity of macro-economic principles–for example the complexity of government policies and procedures as managed by the Federal Reserve Board–and distill them into something that a child can understand: a shiny round metal object that enables you to buy stuff. Wouldn’t it be great if identity were that simple?

3. Coins would enable people, organizations or other entities to stake out their portion of the Internet. They would have something they “own”, that is backed by the integrity of the system that regulates it. Attribute providers would have a starting point to bootstrap their various verification processes, which would differ depending on the type of coin: organizational, personal, or other. I think this vision is aligned with the direction that many identity gurus think the market needs to transform: to a more open system of assured attributes rather than assured identities. By monetizing identifiers, perhaps the invisible hand of the market can achieve the socially desirable end to allow the recapture of value inherent in the content, networks, and other data that make up the digital infrastructure of a modern person or other entity. As one last note, the goal for a solution like xdiCoin would be to issue an almost unlimited supply of coins. There should be no value to squatting on persistent non-re-assignable identifiers (i.e. long numbers). Article resource:-http://thegluuserver.livejournal.com/6407.html