India has come close to this. At one point they proposed one IPv6 /64 per citizen as an absolute right. It doesn't fit current address allocation models, or even routing models, but I can see what took them there. As an overlay network? It might be interesting.

One assumes that the /64 may change if they change providers, or else there's a big central routing point for these and you can only host them in India.

I think, but cannot verify right now, they intended it to be a static assignment, tied to you. Initially a geographic prefix model. Yes, over time, it would decay as people move. But for rural poor, dalit, it would become a de facto routable identity. Analogous to voter ID maybe (I am told that there was a big push on voting rights for the agrarian poor)

Alternatively, give everyone an assymmetric encryption key associated with you identity. To prove your identity, you sign a challenge with your private key, and the other party verifies it using your public key (which could itself be signed your government).

Although, for that to fully work,you would need international cooperation on a standard for that protocol.

Nah. Just have people generate their own keys. Then distribute a token to everyone, like registering to vote or NYC ID. Finally, have an official mixer like tornado cash that only works with these tokens. Ring signatures baby !

Now you distribute UBI, allow voting etc. And it is all pseudonymous.

That’s what we are building out at Intercoin.org/applications btw :)

Ring signatures -based mixers for voting seems like a bad idea... how do you solve vote selling?

If you want to go all the way, you can make a system where you can’t prove how you voted. But you can check using ZKP that your vote was counted in the final result. https://medium.com/edge-elections/what-is-a-zero-knowledge-p...

But out of curiosity, what exactly do you imagine happens in vote selling? Someone pays off each individual in half the population to vote a certain way? How do they do this at scale and how do you know it isn’t more cost—effective to just influence them?

Most people who voted for Biden instead of Bernie ahead of Super Tuesday made up their minds on the way to the polls. Biden wouldn’t have even won if nearly all the other participants wouldn’t have dropped out and endorsed him. He was losing badly to Bernie (and Pete) but as soon as he managed to prove electability in one state, all the other candidates fell on their sword. It’s like in a poker tournament where the chip leader loses to some guy who isn’t even 2nd or 3rd because everyone else stands up and gives him their chips.

And also, there are trade offs the other way. There are tons of failure modes in voting non electronically. I write about them here:

https://www.coindesk.com/in-defense-of-blockchain-voting/

>allow voting

Voting should always have a paper trail. And there's also the problem of allowing the technologically illiterate/aversive to vote.

What good is the paper trail? Does it prove to the voter that the electronic machine recorded the vote as intended? If so, how?

A sister comment just asked what we would do about selling votes. Well, if you can use the piece of paper to prove how you voted, I guess you “can sell your votes”

Sounds interesting but can you elaborate on the social benefits, challenges and potential downfalls of such an approach?

Sure. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/03/12/in-defense-of-block...

Many countries have something close to that, actually. I've seen this used for various eGovernmnet-type services, although the UX isn't really different from any 2FA-authenticated service. But it allows you to perform some official legal acts online (filing taxes,...).

Given that many countries already use national id systems for age verification if you say want to buy booze online i always wanted a vault for every citizen, with healthcare, education, banking services, an email, maybe even a personal domain thrown in. Have one api for it that every company can hook into for verification.

The amount of physical disparate papwerwork you have to still do for these things is incredibly annoying.

The EU is moving close to this

Wer have something similar for companies in Portugal. The state pays the former state-owned mail service to host a "inbox" of sorts (not a full fledged email) that every company has to have. I am not sure if it covers individuals, though. It is mostly used to notify the companies of tax dates and such.

State-funded, E2EE: Pick one

Also if you want good E2EE, it's not going to be email (at least not with current protocols). Especially if you want interoperability with the existing web.

This is kinda what Denmark has. Companies and government agencies can send digital letters to your government digital mailbox.

Also would be cool to have a distinguished (via UI) inbox for government only communications that can't be phished. This way people can access more government services online. And if there are any security problems they can be resolved by the DMV.

“Messaging.gov”

USPS is a better last mile tech support provider imho. Natural fit if they end as a trust anchor and gov identity proofing provider.

We somewhat do this in Denmark with NemID/MitID and e-boks.

Then conservatives win, sell off state assets to reduce government/patch a deficit and suddenly a private company is data mining anonymized emails for money again :(

As opposed to the progressives tracking everything you do, and suppressing/removing rights if you have wrongthink.

Don't believe me? Check out how many progressives said you shouldn't be able to participate in society if you didn't get the COVID vaccine.

This wasn't an excuse to expand scope to a team bitching session. Conservatives, even in my country (which isn't America), are famous for privatising public assets. The key point is that I can't see how a service like this that operates at a net-loss, that provides what people who aren't into computers would consider an 'optional service', can survive a cost cutting exercise when you'll have a line of businesses out the door who promise they can make it profitable at the expense of users (who are poorly protected outside of Europe).