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That is an opinion editorial by Shinobi, a self-taught educator within the Bitcoin area and tech-oriented Bitcoin podcast host.
I counsel, earlier than studying this, that you just learn the prior article I wrote explaining what Nostr is and how it works at a high level. You need to then have a good suggestion of the core design of the system at that time, so now let’s check out seemingly issues which are going to happen because it grows in adoption. With the platform becoming a popular one for the Bitcoin community, these issues are ones to pay attention to.
As I mentioned within the prior article, consumer public/personal key pairs are integral to how Nostr works as a protocol. There aren’t any usernames, or any kind of identifiers {that a} relay server is answerable for, to affiliate to particular person customers. It’s merely these customers’ keys which are utterly below their management.
This features as a good binding between the precise consumer and the way they’re recognized by others that forestalls any relay server from unbinding these two issues, i.e., giving somebody’s identifier to a different consumer. This solves one of many greatest elementary issues of platforms used for communication between individuals: the dearth of management over customers’ personal identities. But it surely additionally introduces all the issues of key administration that somebody possessing a non-public key runs into. Keys may be misplaced and keys may be compromised and if such an occasion have been to happen, customers have nobody to go to for help, similar to with Bitcoin. There isn’t a buyer assist to get better something. You lose it, that is it.
That is going to inevitably necessitate a scheme for customers to rotate from one keypair to a different in a manner that’s verifiable and discoverable for different customers that they work together with via the protocol. Your entire protocol relies round proving that an occasion got here from a selected consumer (id key), so all of these ensures exit the window as soon as somebody’s keys are compromised.
How do you deal with that? Simply go examine their Twitter account? Properly, then that is not a really decentralized system, finally, when you require utilizing a centralized platform the place they don’t seem to be answerable for their id to confirm their Nostr id.
Produce other customers attest to the legitimacy of a brand new key? That does not tackle conditions resembling mass key compromises, or not figuring out anybody near them nicely sufficient to belief their attestation.
Nostr wants an precise cryptographic scheme tying the rotation of 1 key to a different. There’s a proposal from developer fiatjaf for a primary scheme that would probably clear up this challenge. The essential thought can be to take an extended set of addresses derived from a single grasp seed, and create a set of “tweaked” keys much like how Taproot bushes are dedicated to a Bitcoin key. Taproot takes the Merkle tree root of the Taproot tree and “provides” it to the general public key to create a brand new public key. This may be replicated by including that Merkle tree root to the personal key with the intention to attain the matching personal key for the brand new public key. Fiatjaf’s thought is to chain commitments going backwards from the tip to the start so that every tweaked key would really comprise a proof that the subsequent tweaked key was used to create it.
So, think about beginning with key Z, the final one within the chain. You’ll tweak this with one thing, after which go backwards and create a tweaked model of key Y utilizing the tweaked Z key (Z’ + Y = Y’). From right here you’d take Y’ after which use it to tweak X (Y’ + X = X’). You’ll do that all the best way again to key A, to get A’, and from there, start utilizing that key. When it’s compromised, the consumer can broadcast an occasion containing the untweaked key A and tweaked key B’. This might comprise all the information wanted to indicate B’ was used to generate A’, and customers may instantly cease following A’ and comply with B’ as a substitute. They’d know definitively that B’ is that consumer’s subsequent key and to comply with that as a substitute.
This proposal nonetheless has some issues although. First, you need to generate all the keys you’d ever use forward of time and it has no technique to rotate to a complete new set of keys. This could possibly be handled by committing to a grasp key on this scheme that would notarize such rotations, or just producing a really giant set of keys from the start. Both path can be a legitimate course to take, however finally would require conserving a root key or key materials protected and solely exposing particular person hotkeys to Nostr shoppers.
This scheme, nevertheless, does nothing to guard customers or provide a mechanism for id restoration within the occasion that the basis key materials is misplaced or is itself compromised. Now, this is not to say that there isn’t any profit to fiatjaf’s scheme, there completely is, however it’s essential to make the purpose that no answer solves each drawback.
To hold forth a bit on potential options right here, think about as a substitute of a sequence of tweaked keys like he proposes, {that a} secret is tweaked with a grasp chilly key that should even be used to signal the occasion rotating from one key to a different. You’ve got key A’, which is derived by including A and M (the grasp key), and the rotation occasion can be A, M and B’ (generated by including B and M) with a signature from M. M could possibly be a multisig threshold key — two of three, three of 5, and so on. This might probably add redundancy towards loss in addition to present a safe mechanism for key rotation. This opens the door as nicely to utilizing providers to help in restoration, or spreading a few of these keys round to trusted associates. It presents all the identical flexibility as multisig does with Bitcoin itself.
NIP26 can also be a proposal that could possibly be very helpful in dealing with this drawback. This specifies a protocol extension to occasions permitting a signature from one key to authorize one other key to publish occasions on its behalf. The “token,” or signature proof of delegation, would then be included in all occasions posted by the second public key on the primary’s behalf. It could possibly even be time restricted in order that delegation tokens robotically expire and should be renewed.
In the end, nevertheless it’s solved, this drawback has to be solved for Nostr in the long run. A protocol based mostly totally on public/personal key pairs getting used as identities can’t achieve traction and adoption if the integrity of these identities can’t be protected and maintained for customers. That finally will boil all the way down to having to consistently use out-of-band and centralized platforms to confirm new keys and coordinate individuals following your new id when one thing is misplaced or compromised, and at that time, these different platforms develop into a method to sow confusion and have interaction in censorship.
Problems with key administration and safety are massive issues with a really giant design area stuffed with commerce offs and ache factors, however they’re issues which are going to should be solved inside the context of Nostr for it to work. In my subsequent article, I’ll summarize some points that I see cropping up with regard to relay server structure and scaling points that Nostr builders must confront given the fundamental information constructions that Nostr is constructed on.
For anybody studying and questioning why I have never talked about decentralized identifiers (DIDs): Sure, that could be a potential answer to those issues that, for my part, is kind of complete. Nonetheless, Nostr builders appear very hesitant to combine DIDs into the protocol or shoppers as a consequence of the truth that it could create exterior dependencies exterior of the Nostr protocol. In case you are not accustomed to how DIDs work on a technical degree and have an interest, this article by Level 39 is a really nicely written summarization of how they work.
It is a visitor publish by Shinobi. Opinions expressed are totally their very own and don’t essentially replicate these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.
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