I have thought about identity, and this move with 3box. I support such work as it brings options for dApp developers. I also think at the same time with FOAM being in it’s early stages that we be careful that we are not creating unnecessary baggage in the ecosystem.
Just because we can, should not be a reason. There is also some components of the blockchain that function, completely and in total isolation, trying to add checks and gates to that functionality serves only to alienate the protocol from the wider Blockchain.
Identity on the FOAM Blockchain
FOAM and ethereum are de facto pseudonymous, there is tenuous ability to link any arbitrary transaction to an external known entity. In some cases software applications themselves may process, receive or send FOAM or ether and may be acting based on external stimuli or programmed behavior. While FOAM may have been acquired in the original crowd sale, post-sale peer to peer transactions, or by the future act of mining in the FOAM ecosystem, there is no preference to how the FOAM is acquired and the fungability of FOAM, MUST NOT be^[Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels] impaired.
“A pseudonymous user who has acquired a favorable reputation gains the trust of other users. When users believe that they will be rewarded by acquiring a favorable reputation, they are more likely to behave in accordance with the site’s policies^[wikipedia: Pseudonymity_and_online_reputations].”
Pseudonymous-identification MUST be supported by FOAM transactions; as there is inherent pseudonymity already in the protocol layer, and no effort should be made to discriminate in that pseudonymous-identification. FOAM as such is a platform and ecosystem allowing for the creation of the transactions on all transactor’s own mutually agreed upon terms. For casual or limited relationships, a pseudonym acts as a placeholder.
Where relationships are intended to have longer lasting duration, reputation becomes a value for the pseudonymous identity.
The attestation of the transactor to a transaction is made within a pseudonymous protocol, such attestation is de facto “identification” and will suffice to confirm that identify. Or more specifically, the signing of an ethereum transaction with the FOAM holder’s private key identifies the owner of that key as authorized to complete that transaction.
