Sending Money Like Sending E-mails: Cryptoaddresses, The Universal Decentralised Identities
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Proceedings 11th Doctoral Workshop on Mathematical and Engineering Methods in Computer Science, Telč, Czech Republic, 21st-23rd October 2016 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.233.5 |
| Field | Informatics |
| Keywords | cryptocurrencies; decentralised identifiers; cryptographic identifiers |
| Description | Many systems whose central features include usage of cryptography to secure their functioning present users with long random-looking identifiers. These identifiers are supposed to be shared and to identify users or their resources within the systems. To improve usability of such systems, we propose a decentralised system of cryptoaddresses which resemble well-known e-mail addresses. The system enables cryptoaddresses to be mapped back to the original identifiers. Our proposed system includes leveraging of the existing DNS system secured by its DNSSEC extension; implicit distribution of public keys of servers; and a design of a simple communication protocol between a cryptoaddress client and a server, based on top of a secure communication channel. Although primarily aimed at cryptocurrencies, the presented system is flexible, extensible and can be used for a variety of systems with cryptographic identifiers. |
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