Weaving Together Web3: uPort, Identity, and Network Effects
One of the promises we often hear about this new 3rd generation Web is that we will see the end of information silos. Silos such as the ones presided over by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, UBER, Amazon and the like. We also hear promises made about new opportunities for users to manage, control and even profit from their own data. This scenario, so far, has been slow to manifest itself due partially to technical limitations but also due to poor user experience, just ask Phil Zimmerman. But all is not lost. Strides on both the technical and the user experience fronts are being made and uPort’s use by Taiga Market for ETH Denver is a sign of things to come.
First, a little history. One of the most important advancements in the last era of the internet was something called OAuth. OAuth, created in 2006, is in someways an evolution of OpenID (as well as a number of other API’s) and essentially allows applications to expose their services via an API without requiring their users to expose their account credentials. What followed was the emergence of the now ubiquitous “Login with Facebook (or Google, or Github, or LinkedIn)” button. This was a major improvement in User Experience across the internet. The average user increasingly suffers from “password fatigue” the result of which are less secure accounts due to weak passwords and password reuse. Even worse, many would-be users of applications simply abandon signup when required to enter in a slew of personal details just to get started. The ability to Login with an account they have already invested a lot of energy in has resulted in users choosing to login with one of their social accounts 80% of the time when it is an option. Not only does social login make the registration experience better, but it also opens up opportunities to further improve the UX of the destination application, and this is where we see the network effects takeoff. When a user logs in with Facebook for example, they often share a treasure trove of personal demographic and psychographic data. This data is used by applications like Spotify for instance, to make predictions about the music you might like. The same when you login into UBER or Postmates or Pinterest. This phenomenon has supported the proliferation of curated content experiences across the internet and made millionaires out of many small teams. HTTP wove together Web 1.0, OAuth wove together 2.0 (you might actually consider is Web 2.5). On the surface, this seems like a win-win, but as with seemingly everything else on the internet these days, there are other motivations at work.
In the case of Facebook, social login allows them to tighten their grip as the defacto identity provider on the web.
Every time you login to a service via Facebook, not only do you allow Facebook data to be transferred to the service you are trying to use, but you also allow what you do on that service to be transferred back to Facebook.
This results in Facebook building more and more robust data portraits of their users which they use to advertise to you. This can have dire consequences (see: United States democracy). So, what if you want to opt out of this mess? Not so fast. You will soon realize that that would require you to rebuild your accounts across the myriad of services you probably currently use. For most, including me, this is a non-sequitur. And this illustrates the dark side that comes with the network effects of web 2.0/2.5: increased switching costs. It simply costs too much in terms of time and energy, let alone money, to switch platforms or services and effectively harms us all by stifling competition and innovation.
Is there a remedy? Enter uPort. As evidenced by uPort’s use in the ticketing process for this year’s ETH Denver, there is a viable alternative to the Facebook hegemony. With uPort a user can store their personal information (as opposed to storing it on Facebook) and present that information to a service they would like to use at the moment of login. The key here is that the service can verify that the information being shared truly refers to the person who is presenting it, a task usually performed by Facebook. Additionally, because of the nature of uPort, information created about the user such as their UBER Driver Rating can be stored by the user in a way that doesn’t require it to be exposed to another service unless the user chooses. This greatly reduces the switching cost of migrating your information and reputation to a new service. Hallelujah.
This year, Taiga Market decided to take advantage of this new paradigm and build a service to allow ETH Denver participants to register for the event using their own uPort IDs and then distribute the tickets to those IDs. This means that the tickets and proof of registration can be as easy as logging into a service with a Facebook account but without needing to rely on a centralized party to steward your personal data and vouch for its authenticity. Additionally, there is no risk of being locked out of your account due to “mistakes” made by the application or losing your tickets and information due to shifting, subjective Terms of Service. This signals a major step forward not only for uPort, but for the internet as a whole. It shows that this new class of decentralized applications can return control of personal information to the people without having to sacrifice the network effects that have catalyzed the last decade of the Web’s growth and which will prove to be of vital importance in the long term success and adoption of Web 3.0.
We greatly look forward to seeing services like Taiga Market continue to facilitate sovereign ticket ownership and event registration- almost as much as we look forward to seeing you at ETH Denver!
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