Strongly agree, with one important nuance / correction on this part: "Same thing with the key stuff...do we have "house rotation" for the moment your house burns down?" I need to point out here that a fully functioning key rotation / replacement scheme for Nostr currently exists. This is not an unsolved problem. It's fully implemented at Inkan and you can use it today. I've been using it for months. The fact that people aren't looking at it or trying it out doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It exists and it works. See below. View quoted note →
inkan's avatar inkan
The way it usually goes, your online identity is your private key. If the key is compromised, there goes your identity. Inkan fixes that. You keep a master key in cold storage and a signing key for everyday use. If the signing key ever leaks or gets lost, the master revokes it and delegates to a new one. Same identity, same followers, fresh signing key. If you'd like to take a look at the prototype: https://www.inkan.cc. Log in with your NIP-07 extension and say hi to the test identities already walking around. Or make one of your own.
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Constant's avatar
Constant 1 month ago
I understand, but you run into the same issue the moment your master key is compromised. You buy a rotation scheme and allowing for 1 key in cold storage, by paying for intepertation complexity/demands. Im not saying that is a bad thing per se; one could argue that for high profile ID's, like a president or something, this is warrented; those that want to run this extra type of verification know that they should irt this ID, and can be bothered to do so (perhaps, assuming). But as a 'general' scheme, i: 1: don't believe there will be one scheme that manages universal addoption. 2: think that should not even be the case to begin with, regardless of whether that is manageable/possible/achievable. To expand on 2 (i deem 1 to be self-explanatory): all (rigid formal) defenses like this that you implement turn against you and benefit the attacker the moment an attacker succeeds in penetrating them. If the running assumption is 'this master key is truth/my guiding star the moment there is appearent chaos', and that assumption is invalid, you just increased the problem. Frankly, i suspect i think that all rotation schemes should be abandoned, but like i said i leave the door somewhat open that they could be valid in certain instances (though i am almost convinced they are not....almost). Ive written an article on this, but in short: If all you can do is extend what is ultimately the same problem, i much rather just deal with it head-on, and accept that the only way to fix this is 'social recovery', i.e. leveraging 'side-channels' to re-establish the same 'identity' under a different keypair via the 'social' context of the old keypair. The more significant an ID is, the easier this probably is to achieve, so the risk is mitigated in that sense. Where we find eachother is our love for OTS haha, because i think OTS can be used to preserve your post-history under an old key, by stating under the new key until what date the posts are valid, and outside observers can, using OTS, determine what is part of that history/the validity of it, after the fact. Anyway, you will probably always going to find me countersignalling any (formalized) rotation scheme, but don't let me discourage you :)