NFID: The Digital Identity Protocol
NFID takes a leap toward building an interoperable identity layer for the internet using the Internet Computer’s novel cryptography.
An interoperable identity layer for the internet
The 2008 breakthrough technology of Bitcoin gave people a way to own digital data, enabling people anywhere to immediately and pseudonymously share something about themselves that others on the internet could trust (i.e., how much BTC they own). The crypto industry has exploded with innovative ideas since then — but we’ve hit a ceiling with digital identity.
People are starting to demand (and governments are starting to write regulations about) privacy, pseudonymity, and minimal disclosure of personal information. Governments are incentivized to increase their citizens’ participation in the digital economy, but people are realizing that their finances, health, relationships, preferences, and other personal information are vulnerable to targeting and exploitation by bad actors.
Our team at Identity Labs built NFID to solve these problems. It’s a digital identity built entirely on the Internet Computer that enables users to easily and anonymously manage their data in all of their wallets and across all of their personal devices. NFID makes using decentralized applications easy by:
- enabling the user to sign in to services without downloading an app or extension;
- privately storing information so that the user doesn’t need to repeatedly complete forms to prove who they are;
- streamlining the process of making and receiving payments online.
With NFID, users no longer need to worry about the privacy of their data because privacy is built-in by default.
Create your identity now at https://nfid.one. If you have an existing Internet Identity anchor, follow these simple steps to sign in to dapps with NFID.
How OpenChat and DSCVR reduce friction with NFID
Developers want to focus on building great products that are easy to use; they don’t want to focus on the precipitous drop off in registrations from high-friction wallet onboarding flows that prevent users from even trying their products. Developers want to reduce friction for new users to create accounts quickly, easily, and securely.
In Web3, developers can utilize the capability of a user’s wallet to make payments and display ownership of NFTs for permissioned gating, so they choose to add NFID because it provides the easiest authentication for user onboarding. OpenChat and DSCVR integrated NFID as a user-onboarding option because it provided the lowest friction method for new users to try their dapps.
While some identity providers require your users to download an app/extension or go through a time-consuming multi-step process, NFID meets your users where they are, with smart device biometrics and Gmail sign-in without sacrificing their privacy or security.
A Metawallet that provides dapps sybil resistance and cross-account proofs
A major problem on the internet is that it’s very difficult for an application to trust any information a user provides. Because users own all of their data when they use NFID, applications can simply request trustworthy information, like proof that a user’s mobile phone number hasn’t already been used from a different identity (without revealing the phone number itself). Developers can build applications that ensure one account per verified mobile phone number with NFID.
As more applications issue reusable credentials — i.e., MODCLUB’s Proof-of-Humanity, People Parties on the NNS, distrikt batches, or DSCVR reputation — your users will be able to prove their ownership of digital assets in zero knowledge.
Soon, NFID will also support attached wallets for making and receiving payments, making it a Metawallet identity protocol capable of routing transfers and proofs across accounts. Before NFID, each transaction made people more identifiable, targetable, and exploitable because what can be observed can be controlled, which is why we believe reusing the same wallet address as a form of authentication and verification of assets is limited.
Privacy by design: Authenticate privately and securely with one touch
OpenChat and DSCVR value user privacy and wanted to ensure that, like the Internet Identity authentication framework, user’s activity across other applications couldn’t be observed by anyone. Even when using Google to authenticate to your NFID, it’s simply a method to authenticate to your private, self-sovereign identity without revealing where else you connect NFID or how you transact.
With NFID, when an application requests information about NFT ownership, reputation on other applications, or any other associated personal data, NFID preserves privacy by sharing proofs instead of raw data: “Hi, I’m anonymous, and yes, I have over 3 ICP,” not “Hi, I’m the owner of 122.412 ICP, these 7 NFTs, and these 16 pages of transaction history across these 12 applications.”
Why build on the Internet Computer?
To renew the open web, people must be in control of their entire online experience. The moment a centralized component comes between a user and their online account, it becomes a privacy and security vulnerability waiting to be exploited.
Building on the Internet Computer allows NFID to be distributed through the open web rather than permissioned organizations and app stores. If it were distributed from a centralized provider like Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud, multiple backdoors would exist to shut the interface down and compromise the identity. Only the Internet Computer and Internet Identity provide the requisite levels of security, cryptography, scalability, flexibility, and interface decentralization to host a viable solution to the decades-long problem of self-sovereign identity.
Want to use or learn more about NFID?
Create anonymous identities today on DSCVR (Web3 social media & community building), OpenChat (Web3’s largest instant-message dapp), Kinic (Web3 search engine), ICME (decentralized SquareSpace and NFT minter), UserGeek (decentralized data analytics for developers), Codebase (decentralized GitHub), and many other projects whose NFID integrations are coming soon.
