Identity and math

Co-founder at @icebreaker

icbk.me/web3pm.fc

@web3pm what was that you said about how y’all are doing stealth addresses 🤪

the people need to know 

i think y’all are first i’ve seen outside of payments (umbra, sefu, etc)

The open professional network where you meet exceptional people • Casting in /icebreaker • Get started at icebreaker.xyz

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Alright, but still planning on doing a longer post on web3 identity and how we think the long term model is app specific stealth addresses backed by zk credentials. 

Will share a preview and write up of the stealth addressing we launched this week on @icebreaker after dinner

folks can learn so much from y’all 

it’s very very very cool to me

makes me so happy

OK here goes.

We posted about it earlier this week in our TG. As quick context, Icebreaker lets people and brands make dynamic, self-sovereign connections. 

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Think about it like Linkedin, except instead of being squished into a single identity that you can connect with only on LinkedIn's platform (and then be monetized thru inmails), it is any version of your identity that you can use to connect with anyone else and then take with you anywhere...

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Anyway, we've had a basic version of stealth addresses for a while by allowing social login to fresh embedded wallet via our friends at Privy (h/t Asta, @henri and @segall), but we wanted to go further and still let people generate attestations and do web3 stuff without forcing any login at all.

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So we launched the first iteration of anon stealth addressing which spins up a local key in the receiving user's browser when they connect with someone, and then uses that secret key (which even we don't know) to generate a new public address to use when connecting with the user who shared their contact card.

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From a product POV, this lets us generate an immediate connection (manifested as a web3 address) when someone shares their icebreaker with someone else, while the receiving user
still controls whether to prove possession of that address or let it get deleted from their device.

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Soon this'll start getting REALLY INTERESTING as we allow you to bring in regular and zk Verifiable Credentials, and then attach derivatives of those credentials to arbitrary stealth addresses.

Let's think about the implications...

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For one, this’ll allow me to finally go to crypto conferences and prove what year I got into crypto without doxing my wallet address.

But more interestingly, I can now prove practically anything I want to about myself in a zero knowledge way to anyone through a brand-specific stealth address.

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Making this seamless, including for people without any crypto knowledge, unlocks MYRIAD never-been-possible use cases.

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For those who don’t know, I helped build Google’s advanced marketing and measurement.

The ability to personalize and measure in a truly privacy preserving way like this was complete science fiction as of 2021 when I left Google for crypto.

Practically no one in web2 sees this coming.

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A former colleague said "[Big Company] research looked at crypto and decided there's only one threat to ads: decentralized identity. But they don't think it's possible".

Not only is it possible, it's inexorable, and we at @icebreaker, alongside many other amazing builders in crypto, are actively accelerating it.

... on farcaster, on telegram, on eve online… we don’t care… it’s your data so it should be your connections graph and your choice.

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