Passcards give an online face to your identity

Ever since the early days of Bitcoin, coders and bloggers have been searching for a way to create a fully distributed, authority-free way of managing highly-secure identities online.

Ultimately, this search is for a replacement for all government-issued identification, not just another password management application. Not only would such a system stop problems such as having your passport lost or revoked while travelling, but it also could be tied into everything else in your life that needs your authorization to work.

For example, financial websites and bitcoin wallets could let you into your account without you even using a password. Your house lights and music could be turned on to your favourite settings as you enter each particular room. Your office security system would automatically let you in as you approach, with very high levels of security. All of these automations are technically easy to achieve, in a perfect world. But because we lack a highly secure system of electronic identity today, we have not been able to put them to practical use yet.

Designing a system to give people identity online while not allowing others to access that identity is a problem as old as the internet. While the cryptographic solution has technically existed since the mid 1970’s, since the invention of Public Key cryptography, displaying its full potential for securing identity online has thus far escaped the grasp of developers and entrepreneurs.

The first noteworthy attempt at using the blockchain for this purpose was Namecoin, a Bitcoin-based information registration and transfer system. Even though it was a clone of the Bitcoin blockchain, it was designed to create a distributed Domain Name Registrar, and not just use their coins as money.

"Namecoin was the first fork of Bitcoin and still is one of the most innovative altcoins. It was first to implement merged mining and a decentralized DNS.
— – Namecoin Website

To take the underlying idea further, there have been several different projects over the years to tackle human identity systems in different ways. Perhaps the most prominent is Onename, which has received $1.62M during the course of two fundraising rounds in 2014. Today, Onename boasts over 25,000 users with several prominent developers, VC rockstars, and other personalities displaying on their front page.

Onename allows users to claim a universal username they call a passname, and link it to their various social media profiles. From there, they can include information about themselves such as a picture, contact details, a PGP signature and even a bitcoin address. This free service then gives you a personal profile page which makes it easy for others to find you and your contact information, much like a universal online business card.

"Onename gives you a digital passport to receive bitcoin, login around the web and stay in control of your identity and data."
— – Onename

Enter Passcard, a new, open-source website and toolset, started by the same developers behind Onename. It takes the information from Onename profile pages a useful step further. Displaying a slick mockup of a possible identity card at the front of their website, there is neither a physical card offered nor proposed anywhere on the site. Instead, the website explains how their identity solution is meant to be a replacement for your passwords, wallet, and keys.

"At first, you’ll be able to present your digital passport when logging into applications, and eventually you’ll be able to use it when asked to present identification in an in-person context (as you would with a passport or driver’s license)."
— – Passcard website

Launched on May 11, the website exists to walk you through getting set up with your own passcard. At the bottom of the page, it asks you to choose a passcard “registrar.” Similar to a Domain name registrar, the idea being promoted by the passcard system is to use only 3rd-party services to place your identity on a Blockchain with.

This blockchain naming system is closely analogous to the internet’s existing Domain naming system, which was the first and largest decentralized system mankind invented for storing information that we can all access.

“The Blockchain Name System (BNS), formerly known as Openname, is very similar to the Domain Name System (DNS), but differs in that it gives stronger guarantees on ownership and security, has no trusted parties or "root servers", and is completely decentralized.”
— – Passcard website

Similar to Bitcoin in nature, this system of open-source code, decentralized architecture, and blockchain-linked user information is a new protocol for handling identity online, and it may be just what it takes to create a system that people will learn to trust far more than legacy identity systems.

"User identities are validated and secured by the blockchain, ensuring user-provided information can’t be tampered with."
— – Passcard website

At this time, passcard offers two registrar options; Onename and Namecoin. Either service can be used as a central place to store your identity, and from them, use passcards. Being an open-source website, we are likely to see many other passcard registrars added to that page in the future.

While Namecoin stores identities on its own blockchain, Onename uses Bitcoin’s blockchain through a new blockchain data storage protocol called Blockstore, also produced by the Onename team. In either system, your identity is stored in a decentralized, secure way that would take hackers an incredible amount of resources to try to edit. The major difference in the two systems is, of course, that with Bitcoin’s blockchain, editing would be far harder, and probably impossible.

Rather than relying on interested parties to pop by your passcard registrar’s website every time they would like your contact information or to learn anything about you, the passcard team offers a way to help you embed your passcard profile on your own website. This passcard comes nicely formatted and can be optimized easily, all from sticking some small javascript code snippets into your website’s page code.

Example

Well suited for a blog sidebar or page footer under an article, these profile cards act like always-updated business cards and have links to your social media accounts at the bottom. Including your bitcoin address at your registrar makes a quick bitcoin payment address link on here too.

The question now is how quickly will developers adopt passcards and the whole BNS system. The protocol lends itself to many different applications online, and has the promise to be the only identity system anyone ever needs, but it has a long way to go before we see everyday users throwing away their passports in favour of a passcard alternative.

A first mainstream application using passcards has already been released. Onename developer Larry Salibra recently created the first 3rd-party application using passcards, in the form of a WordPress plugin. Dubbed Nametiles, this app allows any blogger using WordPress, the web’s most popular blogging platform, to insert and display anyone’s passcard in their blog post.

To use it in a WordPress blog post, bloggers simply need to type a plus sign and a valid passcard username (a passname) and this can be used as a quick reference or signature, anywhere on the page. When readers hover their mouse over the top of this linked passname, the passcard in question pops up for display. It also gives bloggers the option to give their registered readers the ability to optionally use their passcard avatar, as shown at their passcard registrar.

Now that we have the ability to put our identity into a profile controlled by a private key, in the same manner that our bitcoins are stored, it is likely that we will need the same level of protections around them that our bitcoins receive.

“Recent advancements in Bitcoin/Blockchain have the potential to take us back to the promised land of a truly decentralized, free, and open Internet. There is a lot of work to be done, but at least there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
— – Onename Blog

It may be years before we see the same systems and hardware devices supporting our identity that we see securing our bitcoins, but then again, perhaps all we need is one simple smartphone app that does everything we need our identities to do for us. It is still very early in the universal identity game, but there is more than enough promise to keep developers focused on the goal.