Woolball Name System (Phase I) - Feedback Needed!

I’m building a new blockchain name system. The final version will incorporate several new ideas. But we start with baby steps, with these ideas:

1. Two separate name-spaces, one for humans and one for artificial entities (organizations, AIs..).
2. Registering a human name requires a zk proof-of-humanity.

I need your feedback about it!

Since there are no comments here yet (sigh), the discussion will be be in The United Web Forum.

1. Two separated name-spaces, for humans and artificial entities (organization, AI, or others)

Woolball wants:

1. A clear distinction of who’s human and who’s fake.
2. A proof that someone is indeed a human, see next section.
3. That artificial names will be created only by humans, either directly or indirectly.

What are artificial entities? These are organizations, AI, or bots (or others) that are created by humans but might look, from the outside, as independent entities. We want them to have names in the system, but we don’t want to mix them with human names.

Name Spaces.

1. Human names end with a #, e.g., neiman#.
2. Artificial names ends with a double ##, w.g., woolball##.

To give a complete picture, there are also “subnames” in Woolball. Like, website.neiman#. These are equivalent to subdomains in DNS, so let’s not talk about them. They are meant for naming objects mostly.

Question 1. Is this separation understandable? Is the notation easy to read or confusing?

Registration of human names is discussed in the section below. But let’s talk now about artificial names. There are two additional questions:

Question 2. Who can register a new artificial name?

Question 3. Who can own an artificial name?

Here are my current personal answers:

1. Any wallet that already owns a name, can create an artificial name. Doesn’t matter if it holds a human name, a subname, or another artificial name.

   This is the general option. The restrictive option is only wallets who own a human name can establish artificial names. I’m considering it, but it excludes a group of people establishing an organization together.

2. Artificial names can be owned by any account, even if it doesn’t hold a human name.

   The other optoins is that artificial names can only be owned by accounts that already hold a human name. Once again, I’m not sure what the right option is.

2. ZK proof of humanity is needed to claim human names

It’s based on my Baby Woolball project from the ZK Hack Krakow.

The process implemented at the moment is:

1. Register a human name. You also need to specify your public key.

   This name is disabled! You have 30 days to submit proof of humanity to enable it.

   Why do you need to give your public key? I mean, your wallet address is already a public key in some way, right? Well, for a few reasons:

   • Separation of wallet and ID. Your bank app shouldn’t be your ID and vice-versa. Too risky.
   • To have a zk-friendly public key.
   • It’s kind of 2FA: if one is lost the other can help recovering it.
2. Ask an institute for proof of humanity. The proof of humanity is given for your public key and name. Which institute? At the first version, the name system will specify a list of recognized institutions.
3. Submit a zk-proof to the blockchain to enable the name. The zk-proof part makes sure you don’t have to expose your certificates.

I’d like feedback on all of it! Here are reasoning for some of it:

Why can’t an institute create proof of humanity just for your public key?

• A name is the main identifier in Woolball! Public keys or wallet addresses are secondary identifiers and mostly technical ones.

  A person might lose a name and change to another (with the same public key). Or a person can change their public key, but keep the name. We need for to identify.

This is quite a complicated 3 steps registration process!

• It’s not really a question, is it?

  If things work out maybe it would be possible to combine it all to one or two clicks in the same app. But let’s make sure it makes sense first.

This is more of a comment than a question. Woolball is a self-soverign ID. Once registered it can be used without the institute that issued the certificate.

• Yes.

Why do we first register a name and then ask for a certificate?

• Excellent question! It was actually asked during my presentation at ZK Hack Krakow?

  If the institute issues a certificate for a name before the name is registered, someone may “steal” the name in the gap between issuing the certificate and registering. Always start with claiming your name.

Discussion

Come to discuss in:

• The United Web Forum, registration needed, sorry.
• Write me on Mastodon
• My email neiman@hackerspace.pl