Identity

We will initially use EVM address and ENS names as usernames for users. As ENS is also used as an alias for wallet address, building on top of ENS also make supporting feature such as subscription and gifting simpler as we can simply look up the user’s wallet address from the ENS contract (note that wallet address is the same across different EVM chain).

To onboard, a user must generate an ECDSA key pair, and add the public key to the Registrar contract. This new ECDSA key pair is derived by producing a SHA-256 hash of the result of calling web3.eth.person.sign('Sign this message to generate a GUN key pair with key nonce: 0').

The goal of using derived key achieve three purposes:

• to allow users to authenticate their social messages without risking their primary wallet keys, as the risk profile of a wallet private key (access to fund) is much higher than one’s social identity

• to allow users to update a new key pair by incrementing the message nonce in the case when their previous key is compromised

• to allow users to recover their social identity using their wallet without having to remember another seed phrase.

The Registrar contract consists of two major functions:

• update(bytes pubkey): update pubkey for the msg.sender

• updateFor(address account, bytes pubkey, bytes proof): update pubkey for adress as long as proof is valid using ecrecover

Each update will emit a RecordUpdate event. Anyone can then watch for those events and index all users’ identities into whatever database they so choose. The reference implementation of the indexer node uses postgres to store all users’ identities.

Support for Other Blockchain and Naming Systems

We believe that composability is one of the main source of innovation in crypto, and plan to include support any naming system based on demand in the future. We categorize these systems into two broad categories:

• Smart-Contract Platform: systems such as BSC, DOT, and SOL that supports smart contract can be supported by deploying similar contract to their platform.

• DNS-based Naming System: systems such as traditional domain name and decentralized naming system (i.e. bob.com, alice.crypto) can be supported by requiring a TXT record update under the format autism:<pubkey>, of which the indexer can then watches for record updates from those domain.

These should cover the majority of different identities solution exist today.