NameSpace’s DIDs Technology and the Question of Ethics, Implementation and Adoption

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Author: Adeola @ Contributor of PermaDAO

Reviewer: Henry @ Contributor of PermaDAO

In July 2023, when a representative of X (formerly Twitter) sent an email to Gene Hwang, a photographer in San Francisco informing him that the username he held since 2007 was to be taken over, users of tech services offered by centralised companies got a message: you do not own anything.

In Web2, it is an industry standard to open an account before accessing a free or paid service. Email address, phone numbers, credit card numbers, among others are some of the details required to have an account on many Web2 platforms.

Opening accounts on centralised platforms would suggest that a user owns it, in reality, users own nothing. Web2 companies can arbitrarily end a user’s access to their services by seizing accounts. These enterprises seize accounts for reasons ranging from order by statutory authorities to censorship instigated by coordinated attacks on an individual or group by opposing individuals or groups and censorship imposed by the company itself on users for reasons which may be justified or not.

Whether censorship is justified or not is one aspect of the argument but another crucial perspective is whether companies should have the power to censor users and at what point should the censorship hammer strike. A common opinion among stakeholders in the global technology space is that Web2 companies have too many powers and going by history, many times, these companies have unfairly used their powers against users.

How is it that Web2 companies have so much power? The straight answer to the question is that they are centralised. Centralised companies consolidate their powers by retaining control over everything from making their code closed source to accounts or identities they give users of their products.

One of the value propositions of Web3 (or Web2.5 if you belong to the school of thought that Web3 has not fully evolved) is that it takes power from the companies and returns power to users of technology. Blockchain is the underlying technology that drives Web3 and with it comes open source ideology and other ideas built around decentralised technology including decentralised identifiers as well as decentralised storage.

Arweave as the foundation for decentralised ideologies and use cases

In the last five years, Arweave has been building a truly decentralised storage protocol. In this protocol is a thriving ecosystem with projects building products that are taking power from centralised entities bit by bit. For example, while Gitopia has a decentralised code collaboration product which also encourages open sourcing codes, WeaveDB is building a decentralised database infrastructure and NameSpace is decentralising identification as a solution to centralised identity crisis.

Although all the applications and protocols in the Arweave ecosystem are important in that a project could build on another’s infrastructure to create new use cases, thereby making developing new products seamless, one of the use cases with the ability to effortlessly send a message to ordinary users that unlike Web2, they have immense power in Web3 is the one built by NameSpace. Developed by Decent land Labs, NameSpace is out to solve the problem of data breaches, privacy concerns and single points of failure common with centralised identity systems such as email addresses, social media handles, passports and the likes. NameSpace is building a new type of identification it calls decentralised identifiers or DIDs. DIDs are created, owned and controlled by the subject of the identity unlike identifiers issued by centralised entities.

NameSpace is built on Molecular Execution Machine or MEM and everPay which facilitates interoperability; addresses from any chain can be assigned identities and paid for in tokens supported by everPay. Users of NameSpace Identities own them forever and cannot be lost because they are stored on Arweave. This attribute gives it an edge over not only centralised identities but also Ethereum Name Service where continuous ownership of identities is subject to payment of renewal fees.

Decentralised identity system and the question of ethics, implementation and adoption

For some people a truly decentralised identity that is permanently owned by a subject and cannot be deleted in the guise of sanction raises a red flag and stirs the question of ethics. Some people, genuinely or not, are concerned that an uncontrollable system gives bad actors who know that they have full control over their identities a cover to perpetrate negative actions.

In an X space held to discuss NameSpace’s partnership with Hackernoon to provide the latter 50,000 contributors with DIDs, one of the guests who goes by the handle Mouse, said he does not see the concern as problem and proceeded to suggest that browser extensions that prevents accessing domains with contents by bad actors could be installed.

Communities and DAOs who decide to adopt decentralised identities could also have mechanisms they can use against bad actors.

The co-founder of Decent Land Labs, Benjamin Brandall told this writer in an interview, a few options platforms who integrate DIDs framework in their infrastructure could implement to deal with a bad actor situation.

“Build a way to restrict users into the NameSpace contract (any deployer can build their version their way, with their own rules; build a way to restrict users into the protocol which implements NameSpace ; Do nothing at the protocol level but implement restrictions at the UI level (soft ban/hiding activity)” he said.

Brandall, however, indicated that he has preference for the third option, adding that alternative user interfaces should be allowed to battle each other and that “users can use the UI with the soft restrictions they like best”.

On the side of implementation, a DIDs solution that works well with other blockchains will easily thrive and this will aid integration. NameSpace leverages MEM to be chain-agnostic and platforms like Hackernoon, Raven Protocol and AlphaKEK will soon be using DIDs. In the Arweave space, NameSpace powered the creation of over 1,500 IDs on Arweave Name Service.

Adoption is crucial to the success of a tech product. The ethos powering a tech product determines who may be interested in adopting it. There are different opinions about which segment of the tech industry would be open to adopting DIDs. While there are some beliefs that centralised enterprises may not be open to adopting DIDs, Brandall noted in a, X space that even centralised businesses may find DIDs useful to their operations.

“I think one quick win is like for a centralised business even if it’s just like not having to code your own bespoke user identity layer like every platform outside of web3 is re-inventing the wheel with that and making users track different username and password combos and storing identities on their servers it’s like a pain for the user,” Brandall said, adding that for businesses operational overhead and security can be a pain.

NameSpace has a viable product; one that not only challenges centralised entities who cherish controlling users, but serves as an example of true decentralisation to entities within the Web3 space who are implementing some form of identifiers. For it to remain a pioneer in the DIDs space, it needs to remain consistent in standing by the principle of true decentralisation.

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