TezID: An Identity Oracle On Tezos

TezID

TezID is a solution to store proof of identity on the Tezos blockchain and connect that identity to a Tezos address.

This way a TezID address can be applicable to perform certain actions for which a confirmed identity is necessary, or when people should only be allowed to perform an action once.

TezID works on full KYC abilities that will include proof of government ID’s and proof of physical addresses.

Currently, TezID https://tezid.net/ is currently live on Tezos mainnet and can be used to prove a certain Tezos address is owned by two types of digital identity: email addresses and phone numbers. The process is quite simple:

  1. A user connects their wallet to the TezID dapp

  2. The user registers their address with the TezID Smart Contract

  3. The user registers one of the supported proofs with the TezID Smart Contract

  4. The user requests a verification code from the oracle

  5. The oracle verifies the uniqueness of the property (you cannot register the same email twice)

  6. The oracle sends a verification code to the property

  7. The user receives the verification code and enters it in the TezID dapp

  8. The oracle marks the proof as verified in the Smart Contract

Once the proof has been registered on the TezID oracle, applications can call on the oracle and verify if an address qualifies the required proofs. 

Currently, there’s a decentralized voting application in the works that will utilize TezID. The plan is to have a range of different voting contracts available; 1p1v, QV, etc. with adjustable quorum requirements and optional TezID proof requirements.

Anyone can instantiate a contract, and eligible users can vote. Will probably have groups too; perfect for companies and universities. 

KYC

Know Your Customer (KYC) is in some cases an obligation for regulated use-cases, where the specific identity of users needs to be verified. Usually this is done by supplying an official government ID.

For certain use-cases it’s not necessary to prove physical ID though. For some use-cases it is enough to prove the connection of a Tezos address to a certain digital account.

And for other use-cases the single important thing to prove to a certain extent, is the fact that a person can only participate only once. For this you’d need to minimize the possibility that people will create multiple TezID accounts.

One factor to work towards single addresses per TezID user, are costs. The cost of registering an address on TezID is currently $10. For every proof you register on this address, you pay another $10.

This price is currently set to be able to fund the oracle itself and further funding of development. But it also works as a barrier for people to create multiple TezID’s. The more ID’s you want to create, the more it will cost you.

Another factor is the amount of proofs you add per address. Requiring an address to verify several digital identities increases the odds that a user can only create one single TezID address. And not just due to increased costs.

If a single email address is the only thing that is verified through TezID on a Tezos address, there is a high possibility that one user can create several email addresses and thus several TezID’s.

However, if other proofs like a phone number is required too, then the odds and difficulty to create multiple accounts goes down. The more digital identities that are provided to verify 1 address, the higher the certainty that address is a unique person.

Currently, email and phone numbers are supported, but more proofs will be supported later. 

Privacy

All data that is stored on TezID is only stored in hashed form. This means that data, for example an email address, is transformed through a hashing algorithm into a series of characters.

The hashing algorithm works one way, so calculating the input is not possible. This means that you can prove it’s there, but hackers can’t read the data.

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