New Chapter of EthSign
Sign Protocol is an omni-chain attestation protocol, enabling users to freely attest and verify any information on-chain.
Attestations？
Attestations are digital signatures on structured data used to build more trust on-chain.
Attestations are not a novel concept, Singapore, UAE, and other digitally innovative countries have already introduced state-sponsored online attestation services.
Off-chain attestations are primarily used for authentication purposes, an example is Singapore’s OpenAttestation. For instance, a graduate from a university in Singapore who needs to send their transcript to an academic institution abroad can utilize Singapore’s OpenAttestation to generate an attestation that is digitally signed by the government.
The attestations we are discussing here are about how to build a system to help users define or choose formats to attest information they know, Allowing information to not only be verifiable but also usable by smart contracts.
Attestations may sound similar to Oracles, but the latter runs many nodes to achieve consensus on the accuracy of the public data they put on-chain such as the price of the ETH/USD trading pair or the results of a football match.For private data, such as a user’s bank account balance, it needs to be attested (signed) and then sent to the blockchain by an attestor, typically the user themselves.If you trust the attestor, you can feel confident about using the attested data.
Coinbase successfully introduced Coinbase Verifications as the first of many institutional third-parties to implement on-chain attestations, leveraging the Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) to enable users to attest to their KYC status on the Base network. This initiative offers various benefits, including the establishment of a publicly trusted identity label on-chain. These labels can be utilized by other applications for purposes such as optimizing airdrops, on-chain advertisements, SocialFi, and more. Coinbase Verifications bridge the gap between centralized and decentralized accounts, potentially allowing users to log in to Coinbase directly through their wallets, creating a completely new user experience. The service has gained substantial traction, with over 77,000 verified Coinbase users participating in on-chain verification, and its popularity is expected to grow as affiliate teams and projects utilize attestations for different purposes, such as airdrop events, ensuring a more targeted and genuine user base.
Anticipating this trend to extend beyond Coinbase, we foresee more centralized institutions, such as Visa, exploring similar attestation services. While these developments represent significant strides, our vision aims for an even more robust and comprehensive Attestation Protocol, setting the stage for a paradigm shift in the industry.
Why are we doing this?
EthSign has fundamentally been an application for making attestations, where users attest their consent to a document on-chain. After 5 iterations, EthSign became #1 contract signing app in Web3, built interfaces in applications like Telegram and LINE to serve more than 300k users, and integrated with government identity systems like SingPass to attain higher compliance levels.
The next step is to evolve EthSign from a contract signing app to an attestation protocol that allows users to sign everything on-chain.
The Sign Protocol is built upon the backend of EthSign, with a few new concepts:
- Data Availability (including proof availability for zkAttestations)
Attestations are stored on-chain. We allow attestors to choose where to store their attestations and help them migrate across blockchains. This capability extends beyond EVM chains and includes support for Bitcoin, TON and Solana.
- Data Protection
While attestations are transparent to everyone, they deal with a lot of private information such as home addresses and phone numbers. EthSign’s password manager offers a robust encryption solution for data protection. Through the EthSign password manager, attestations are securely encrypted, ensuring that they can only be accessed by the intended wallet addresses, enhancing privacy and security.
- Connect attestation Record to smart contract logics
Integrating attestation records on-chain establishes a direct link between these records and smart contract interactions. The utilization of on-chain attestation records unlocks various use cases, including the development of decentralized social identity, implementation of whitelisting procedures, and integration with DeFi logic.
zkAttestations: Attest your own data
Building a successful attestation protocol seems to require many attestors like Coinbase to join, as they hold the majority of data and are more trustworthy. However, onboarding big companies is not that easy. A decentralized network cannot depend on centralized giants to build.
Instead, zkAttestations use zero-knowledge proofs to assure integrity. Through technologies like TLSNotary, users can directly prove information from webpages and private messages without going through any centralized entities. This protocol uses zk proofs to authenticate that data from a website indeed originates from the information provider’s server and has not been altered.
Specifically, when users log into their Coinbase account, they can capture data from Coinbase’s servers through a browser extension. Then the extension will generate cryptographic proof, confirming information such as the user has already passed verification or that their balance exceeds 1 Bitcoin.
One of the most intriguing applications is vampire attack, like the ones we have seen with SushiSwap vs. Uniswap or Blur vs. Opensea. With zkAttestations, Web3 can vampire Web2 with straightforward incentives.
For example, let’s say EthSign wants to airdrop to DocuSign’s customers. All users have to do is interact with zkattestation once to prove that they have used e-signatures before. Users don’t have to sacrifice any personal information, nor need EthSign ask DocuSign for a client roster. The token incentive will organically migrate users to web3.
Sign Protocol will be launched soon! Get early access at sign.global.
