Muneeb Ali & Ryan Shea: Onename – Bringing Decentralization to Identity with Blockchain ID

A brilliant fact about crypto-economic blockchains is that they enable the construction of naming systems that transcend limits imposed by Zooko’s triangle. Traditional naming systems such as human names, Domain Name System (DNS) and Facebook profile names are subject to Zooko’s triangle and cannot be secure, human memorable and decentralised at once. For instance human names such as Meher Roy are human-memorable and decentralised but not secure (nothing prevents hundreds of people being called Meher Roy). Domain Names like are secure and human-memorable but require a central authority to hand out names.

OneName leverages Bitcoin to build a Global Identification system called blockchain ID. Blockchain IDs for users can be associated with real world identity data such as social media profiles, government issued papers etc. In this episode we converse with Ryan Shea and Muneeb Ali, co-founders and leaders of OneName, Blockstore and BlockStack. They explain the rationale and vision behind their push for a Global Decentralised Identification and Verification system.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Zooko’s triangle and how Bitcoin breaks the triangle
• The general idea behind blockchain ID, how it works and its component transactions
• Why OneName migrated their blockchain ID system from the Namecoin to the Bitcoin blockchain
• Technical design of Blockstore and how it enables decentralised storage and association of large datasets to blockchain IDs
• Vision and use cases for Decentralised Identity, authentication and identity verification.
• The notion of Probabilistic Identity

Episode links:

• Intentional Naming System
• Zooko's triangle
• Why Onename is Migrating to the Bitcoin Blockchain
• Blockchain ID
• Organization of Schemas
• Blockstack
• BlockStore

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/101