ABSTRACT A person's identity is usually a record kept by a third party, which can read, alter, or revoke it. This note describes a primitive in which identity is instead a collection of signed attestations the person holds. Each attestation commits its claim to a Merkle field tree, binds that root to the envelope's metadata in a single digest, and signs the digest with a BIP-340 Schnorr key. Because the commitment is a tree, any single field can be proven to a verifier without revealing the others. Because keys are linked by a signed, hash-chained succession record, the identity persists across key rotation. Because the digest can be anchored to Bitcoin through OpenTimestamps, its existence at or before a given block is provable to anyone. Selective disclosure, key rotation, social recovery, and group membership are compositions of this one primitive rather than separate mechanisms. Thoughts? https://claude.ai/code/artifact/26a881fd-0c63-4a14-b2e3-d778ac2abe6a
Welcome to Tom spacestr profile!
About Me
I love Bitcoin and everything interesting
Interests
- No interests listed.