Home Altcoins News Single Sign On With Ethereum (ETH) Is the Future of Internet App Log in

Single Sign On With Ethereum (ETH) Is the Future of Internet App Log in

Ethereum Single Sign-On

Twitter Handle Brantly.ETH expresses, The Ethereum community has accidentally solved a major problem of the Internet: Single Sign-On “Sign-In w/ Ethereum” is the future of login for every app on the Internet, crypto-related or not just an idea, it’s already the norm for web3 and will spread.

First, what is “Single Sign-On”? It can mean different things depending on context, but here I mean: An average person having one username and password/authentication method that works across all services.

The Internet has no personal username/authentication system, built-in IP addresses change and are based on device/location, and DNS was never really meant to be a personal username system, but services need to know who you are. So each created their own username/password system.

We all know what happened – people are re-using weak passwords written on post-it notes – signup fatigue (“I have to create another username /password ?”) – hacks + data dumps.

Yes, people can use password managers etc, but this doesn’t happen in practice.

One solution in the last decade has been Social Sign-On. You probably already have an account with Google, Facebook, etc, so why not just sign-in with that to new services? Users don’t have to create yet another user name /pass word and new services don’t have to manage it – win/win.

While an improvement, “Social Sign-On” has a few problems 1) It depends on a few big corps.  Do users really want Google to control their user name /pass word for the whole Internet? And, do smaller services really want to be at the mercy of these big corps?

2) It’s inherently fragmented – username /password controlled by a Big Corp can never be “neutral” – “which social account did I use for this service again?” – We wouldn’t even want one company to win out.

3) People still have weak passwords.  If you’re signing into everything with your Google account, your security for everything now depends on the strength of your Google account password, and most people use weak passwords (though 2FA can help here.)

Ethereum Sign-In is a new paradigm. First, Ethereum is giving average people computer generated public/private key pairs with systems in place to securely connect them to services Cryptocurrency incentives are finally doing what cypher punk ideology couldn’t.

Your Ethereum private key is your super secure password that you control. No central service required to make it work. Just sign something w/ your private key. You generate it on your own device, and no service anywhere ever has to have your private key.

Ppl need good UIs for storing/using their private key. This was the Achilles heel of cypherpunks/PGP This is another thing crypto incentives are improving – hardware wallets – Meta Mask, Wallet Connect social recovery etc LOTS of work is still needed but it’s getting better.

Second, you need human-readable username Key pairs, which can be computer generated, but don’t usernames require a central service to store this info? This is Zooko’s Triangle: naming systems can’t be decentralized, secure, and human-readable right?

Blockchains solved this Trilemma. Namecoin (launched in 2011) was the first attempt at this, but never got adoption But ENS Domains, launched in 2017 and built with smart-contracts on Ethereum, has successfully gotten wide adoption as the web3 standard ens.domains.

Users can register a .ETH name on ENS without touching a single centralized service and then hold custody of it themselves with their Ethereum account.  It’s your web3 username, simplifies payments for any crypto, and can even point at a decentralized website, all with one name.

Put all of this together and you have a decentralized self-custody username system for your Ethereum account. No corporation or centralized system involved in this entire set-up, user not corporation owned therefore credibly neutral.  This is the key!

To know more  check Brantly.ETH.

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James

James T, a passionate crypto journalist from South Africa, explores Litecoin, Dash, & Bitcoin intricacies. Loves sharing insights. Enjoy his work? Donate to support! Dash: XrD3ZdZAebm988BfHr1vqZZu6amSGuKR5F

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