You still need to store that data on somewhere to verify if someone owns a membership and whether it is valid though (memberships can expire).
That data is stored on blockchain vs having a centralized database. Refer to an earlier comment for why having it public is useful.
As for why people didn't use certificates till now, I don't know. I know they use wallet connect more which operates on the same principle but with existing adoption.
Re:On Web3 Infrastructure
by betterunix2 on Sunday January 09, 2022 @10:44AM
(#29864200)
...why do you have to have a peer-to-peer network managing a blockchain just to verify membership data? It would be simpler to just have whoever controls memberships sign a user's public key to indicate membership (and then you add some metadata for expirations/membership levels/etc.). A user seeking to assert membership presents that certificate and proves knowledge of the private key.
Really though, I am not sure what problem is being solved here. Why do we need this in the first place? What is the attack scenario we are trying to address?
> This is membership protocol powered by nft. […]
How is this preferable to just having the client generate a local private key and authenticating using public key cryptography?