I probably should have worded it differently to avoid that connotation. There are a lot of identity protocols but that's not what I was focusing on.

On HN I am Sargos. You know this because I am replying to you and only I can do that with this account. I can also tell you that I'm @JamesCarnley on Twitter but there's no way for you to verify that. If I were using my public key to log into HN and Twitter you would know those are both my accounts and thus my persona is verified across multiple applications. If I were to link my public key to my government's identity database then you'd also be able to verify I am really James in real life as well.

And none of that has anything to do with blockchain.

It feels like you're trying really hard to not get web3 any credit here. Try making something like this in the traditional web. People have tried and failed.

Ethereum provides a robust, secure, and increasingly usable key storage and usage system to everyone which makes "just signing a message" a simple task and not a 10 step process probably involving a CLI. It's worth considering the utility of this and the possibilities everyone having a person public/private key pair allows. My fellow software developers among us likely have their mouths watering at the use cases this unlocks. Here's a pretty good thread about the implications: https://twitter.com/BrantlyMillegan/status/13892701158840975...

I’m not sure what utility signing a message has inherently. You do this already behind the scenes on apps like iMessage or Signal with end to end encryption.[1] Or if you want to do it more directly but without the command line, there is Keybase: https://keybase.io/sign

Unless you were to upload each and every chat to a blockchain - which is prohibitively expensive - I don’t see the killer advantage over the previous alternatives. Also, many people here are also programmers, developers, and - surprise - hackers, so I am sure we would be interested in the mouth-watering use cases you’re thinking of (I looked at the Tweet thread you linked but it was just an explanation of public key cryptography in general.)

[^1]: Apple also refused to backdoor a terrorist’s iPhone at the demand of the FBI. OpenSea intervened when someone stole assets from a collector (https://blockzeit.com/opensea-nft-marketplace-stops-hacker-f...)

I haven’t heard a convincing argument for why only ethereum can get users to use key pairs.

You can improve the UX of key management tools without a global network of redundant computers.

> I haven’t heard a convincing argument for why only ethereum can get users to use key pairs.

I never said this.

>You can improve the UX of key management tools without a global network of redundant computers

Yet nobody has ever done it until now.

> Try making something like this in the traditional web. People have tried and failed.

Keybase.io is a quite elegant solution and didn't "fail" due to any fault of its own (the team was acquired by Zoom).

You can verify that you're the same person on Twitter by mentioning “I'm @Sergos on HackerNews” in your Twitter.