The Ethereum Foundation (EF) and Ethereum Name Service (ENS) have endorsed a proposed solution from Spruce, a decentralized identity software company, allowing safe sign-in using Ethereum.
After EF and ENS issued a Request for Proposals in July, seeking developers and software organizations to create a sign-in package that used Oauth, an open standard for access delegation, Spruce’s approach was chosen.
According to a Sept. 13 press release, the company seeks to give people control over their online identities, providing an alternative to turning over personal data to companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook.
The Ethereum ecosystem, according to Spruce, already includes “tens of millions of monthly active wallet users signing with their cryptographic keys for financial transactions, community governance, and more.”
“The security of these wallets has been proven across billions of dollars of digital assets at stake — not theoretical security, but real tests in production. These secure wallets can also be used to sign in to Web2 services.”
Spruce will collaborate closely with the Ethereum Foundation and ENS to ensure that its solution is compliant with existing Ethereum ecosystem standards, emphasizing that “the final outcome will be friendly to implementers while remaining vendor-neutral.”
“By standardizing this workflow, millions of Ethereum users will be able to browse the web with a digital identity that they entirely control,” the researchers claimed.
Spruce noted that work on a best-practices survey, user research, specification drafts, and reference implementation had already begun.
Numio, a cryptocurrency payments and identity management platform, released an app in July that allows users to verify their identity to web services without sharing any sensitive data. To cryptographically verify the data, Numio’s technology employs zero-knowledge proofs.
