Introducing Register.eth — online identities linked to Ethereum

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Registereth

5 min readMay 4, 2017

Register.eth is a project born in the Ethereum reddit community and grown through Ethlance.com. Over the last two weeks we have created a Registry to link Reddit to Ethereum addresses. We have created an Open Source project and found donations to finance a part of the work, and volunteered for the biggest share of it. Here is our vision.

A registered reddit username links to a Ether address

What is the goal of Register.eth?

Simply an open source, decentralized service provider. The main goal is to provide an infrastructure on which other services can build upon. Instead of collecting new online identities each time, projects can pool their user profiles and tap into an ever growing database.

What does this service offer?

Register.eth is a service provider connecting an Ethereum address to a online identity: Reddit, Twitter, Email, etc. It is a link between social media and Ethereum addresses.

So why would this be useful?

Rewarding users: Let’s say you would like to reward a certain Reddit user for a post that was informative. This can easily be achieved by looking up his Ethereum address in the registry.
Further services might register the Reddit name to a ENS subdomain: vbuterin.reddit.register.eth. You can then use the ENS address to send “just a guy” some love.
For nerds: We think he will post a forward contract to the Ethereum Foundation. They will send back some Unicorns. We will take them into a Meatgrinder contract and spread love over our doners.
Decentralized login with your private key: As it has been shown JSON web token logins would be possible. Now you have a link to an existing profile. And we might have a Gravatar registry in the future. https://hackernoon.com/never-use-passwords-again-with-ethereum-and-metamask-b61c7e409f0d
Build user reputation on social media platforms: An online identity. Since reliable source for quality information is becoming a rare commodity, user reputation is becoming more important. Users that share good, reliable information can be trusted and thus get a good reputation.
Your project

Since everything is visible on the Blockchain, how would this project cover privacy?

Since everyone needs different degrees of privacy, different addresses may be used. Privacy is in the control of the user and no single entity can extract rent from exclusive access of profile data.

Will ENS integration be supported?

Yes, absolutely.

Where is the code, can I contribute?

Register.eth

GitHub is where people build software. More than 21 million people use GitHub to discover, fork, and contribute to over…

github.com

I’d like to try this out, how does it work?

Install the Metamask plugin for Chrome:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/metamask/nkbihfbeogaeaoehlefnkodbefgpgknn?hl=en

Create a password, save your seed and choose the Ropsten Test Network. If this is your first time using Metamask, you should get one test Ether which is enough. Clicking the “Buy” button in Metamask will take you to the Metamask Ropsten faucet where you can request additional test Ether.

Next, head on over to Reddit and just create a post with an Ethereum address. There are already a few there.

directory of reddit profile and their ethereum addresses * r/ethereumproofs

Similar to r/KeybaseProofs but for a register based on an ethereum smart contract

www.reddit.com

Instructions on what to do next can be found here:

RedditRegister

Get Chrome Plugin /r/ethereumproofs/comments/66cvut/0x85523d0f76b3a6c3c05b2cfbb0558b45541f100b You can post your proof…

ipfs.io

Currently the front-end is very basic but it works. In the future we plan to have a much more polished front-end.

Hiring for Tasks

We are looking for inspired people to join our community project. In a community project we all give more than what we take, but there is a compensation from sponsoring waiting for you.

Current Task list:

Reddit Frontend MVP (Frontend Dev)
Architectural Review to prove extensibility and modularity (Solidity Dev)
Security Review Bounty program (Solidity Devs)
Engage the community to fill up the Reddit Register (PR)
Engage startups and project to integrate with Register.eth (PR)
Design a generalized UI for all possible registries (Frontend Dev/ Designer)
Implement integration into more Social Media (Solidity Dev)

We are looking for sponsors to fund the work as well.

Join the Project

Furthermore we like to invite every Ethereum project that has use for our databases, to join the Register.eth community effort on Gitter and increase the value of the service, together.