Overview

This is a draft proposal of a new type of identity registrar for the Polkadot network, focusing on optional real-world identity verification (without requesting the sender to disclose anything sensitive), and publicly-retrievable evidence of verification.

We accomplish the goal of optional real-world identity verification by taking advantage of existing publicly-available government eID programs (specifically in the beginning, Estonia's eID program, which through its e-Residency program is available to most parts of the world). The goal of publicly-retrievable evidence is done using a Keybase / keys.pub alike infrastructure -- where the signer publishes an authenticated signature on the platform it wishes to verify.

Optional real-world identity verification

Currently, none of the live identity registrars on Polkadot can adequately verify the "legal name" field of the identity. This new registrar aims at fixing that.

To do this, we utilize existing government eID programs. Initially, this will be Estonia's eID program. eID creates a government-issued ID, unique to each person. Through the e-Residency program, the eID is available to most nationalities in the world. Its signature functionality is allowed for general-purpose usage. Upon signature, it creates a X.509 document. The certificate of the eID only contains the signer's legal name and personal code (which, according to Estonia's document, is considered public information). So we do not leak or obtain any unnecessary information, while in the meantime also verify the signer's identity.

This real-world identity verification is not only useful for confirming a signer's identity, but also provides some level of protection against Sybil Attack, in that we can now properly distinguish if multiple addresses are owned by the same person.

Public-retrievable evidence for verification

Current Polkadot registrars do not yet publish the evidence for verification. This is a disadvantage for users, as when they need to confirm others' identities, they have to trust that the registrars did the verifications properly. By publishing the evidence for verification, we can make the network more decentralized, and eliminate this need for trust.

• For social network accounts, we require the signer to publish a signed message in a publicly-retrievable URL, just like how Keybase works.
• For a Matrix account, we require the signer to send an encrypted message.

Merkle tree data

To save blockchain storage, the evidence data will not be directly published on-chain, but will be retrievable from the web (including IPFS). All evidence data will be put into a merkle tree, and its hash will be periodically saved on-chain. This allows the data to be used on-chain later (by publishing merkle tree proofs) if needed.

Miscellaneous

This document should be considered draft, and substantial changes are expected. Wei makes no commitment of the registrar until the Polkadot community approves it.

This project will be ran as a side project of Wei, and thus it requires no funding. Registrar verification on-chain will be provided for free without fees. However, Wei may send treasury tip proposals later in order to cover necessary transaction fees.