Glossary

Avatar

Avatar is the core of user ID network in ProofService.

All other Identities (Web2.0 account, blockchain wallet etc.) are only binded with Avatar.

For now, Avatar is elliptic curve keypair using secp256k1 curve.

Identity

Accounts / Identities on other Platform which is binded with Avatar.

For example, @my_twitter on twitter platform, my_github on github platform.

See Supported platforms for more info.

Platform

Identity provider.

e.g. Twitter, GitHub, Facebook, Ethereum, etc.

See Supported platforms for more info.

Proof post

To prove "I have this identity", user needs to takes an action: use this identity to post an accessible, specified content, which is called Proof post.

For platform: "twitter", proof post should be a public visible tweet.

For platform: "github", a public visible Gist.

Proof post shapes different on different platform.

See Supported platforms for more info.

If Identity is cryptography ID

Cryptography ID (e.g. blockchain wallet) don't need to put a proof post somewhere, since sigature generating itself can already prove that user owns its private key.

If Proof post is deleted by user

See Downgrade。

Binding (Link)

After ProofService validates Proof post on server side, a binding record of "Avatar <-> Identity" will be saved into Proof Chain.

Struct of Link

Note

Code below is only a reference of Link, not specific implementation in ProofService or API structure.

link.d.ts

// assert(signature.match(/0x[a-f0-9]{144}/))
// Sample:
// 0x3046022100881328457aa312135c37e1ddf8a129717274ce3f389c176936f5cb44edf04fc4022100be183139154d108ce2e5d6ba16678b0dbeb3b7d70caac2b00b2dad8f81e87790
type Signature = string;

// All available chain modification actions
enum Action {
    Create = "create",
    Delete = "delete",
}

// All supported platforms,
enum Platform {
    Twitter = "twitter",
    Keybase = "keybase",
}

// Each link in the proof chain
interface Link {
    // If this is genesis link, leave it null; else, it equals
    // previous link's signature. Worked as a pointer.
    prev: Signature | null;
    action: Action;
    platform: Platform;
    identity: string;
    // if method === Method.Add, then it must be a string; else, left null
    proof_location: string | null;
    // UNIX timestamp (unit: second)
    created_at: number;
    // An UUID of this link, works as a global identifier.
    uuid: string;
    // Signature of this link made by avatar.
    signature: Signature;
}

Proof Chain

Each Link under the same Avatar is chained into a link:

• Each Link has a signature of Avatar.
• Every Link (except the first one under this Avatar) has its previous Link's signature.

So to ensure that ProofService server cannot falsify any of the record in the chain without Avatar-provided signature.

Proof Chain mechanism is not picky of storage media. But we will put it in Arweave / IPFS in the future, anyway.

Struct of Proof Chain

Note

Code below is only a reference of Proof Chain, not specific implementation in ProofService or API structure.

chain.d.ts

const VERSION = "1";

// assert(public_key.match(/^0x[a-f0-9]{130}$/))
// Sample:
// 0x0428b73a2b67a88a47edb15bed5c73a199e24287bb12997c54239e9e6815e24a3032a502d58afe3f36a54f2f7606022907f358d0dd58939cffa0a845c5043ce038
type PublicKey = string;

interface Chain {
    version: VERSION;
    avatar: {
        public_key: PublicKey,
        curve: "secp256k1",
    };
    // See definition of `Link` above.
    links: Link[];
}

Downgrade

ProofService server will periodically check the validity of Proof post.

If Proof post becomes invalid, this binding record will be marked as "is_valid": false (with reason) in Query API.

e.g. User deletes Proof tweet after creating a Link, but doesn't inform ProofService to delete this link (aka unbind).

ProofService still won't (and can't) do anything to Proof Chain even downgraded.

All ProofService can do is to return "is_valid": false in Query API.

How to handle this downgraded relationship is entirely up to applications using ProofService.

e.g. showing a ⚠️ to user, setting it low priority when presenting, or just omitting it.