A protocol for aggregating digital identity information that's broadly interoperable with existing, proposed, and hypothetical future digital identity standards.
This EIP proposes an identity management and aggregation framework on the Ethereum blockchain. It allows entities to claim an Identity via a singular Identity Registry smart contract, associate it with Ethereum addresses in a variety of meaningful ways, and use it to interact with smart contracts. This enables arbitrarily complex identity-related functionality. Notably (among other features) ERC-1484 Identities: are self-sovereign, can natively support ERC-725 and ERC-1056 identities, are DID compliant, and can be fully powered by meta-transactions.
Emerging identity standards and related frameworks proposed by the Ethereum community (including ERCs/EIPs 725, 735, 780, 1056, etc.) define and instrumentalize digital identity in a variety of ways. As existing approaches mature, new standards emerge, and isolated, non-standard approaches to identity develop, coordinating on identity will become increasingly burdensome for blockchain users and developers, and involve the unnecessary duplication of work.
The proliferation of on-chain identity solutions can be traced back to the fact that each codifies a notion of identity and links it to specific aspects of Ethereum (claims protocols, per-identity smart contracts, signature verification schemes, etc.). This proposal eschews that approach, instead introducing a protocol layer in between the Ethereum network and individual identity applications. This solves identity management and interoperability challenges by enabling any identity-driven application to leverage an un-opinionated identity management protocol.
Identity Registry: A single smart contract which is the hub for all Identities. The primary responsibility of the Registry is to define and enforce the rules of a global namespace for Identities, which are individually denominated by Ethereum Identification Numbers (EINs).
Identity: A data structure containing all the core information relevant to an identity, namely: a Recovery Address, an Associated Addresses set, a Providers set, and a Resolvers set. Identities are denominated by EINs (incrementing uint identifiers starting at 1), which are unique but otherwise uninformative. Each Identity is a Solidity struct:
Associated Address: An Ethereum address publicly associated with an Identity. In order for an address to become an Associated Address, an Identity must either transact from or produce an appropriately signed message from the candidate address and an existing Associated Address, indicating intent to associate. An Associated Address can be removed from an Identity by transacting/producing a signature indicating intent to disassociate. A given address may only be an Associated Address for one Identity at any given time.
Provider: An Ethereum address (typically but not by definition a smart contract) authorized to act on behalf of Identities who have authorized them to do so. This includes but is not limited to managing the Associated Address, Provider, and Resolver sets for an Identity. Providers exist to facilitate user adoption by making it easier to manage Identities.
Resolver: A smart contract containing arbitrary information pertaining to Identities. A resolver may implement an identity standard, such as ERC-725, or may consist of a smart contract leveraging or declaring identifying information about Identities. These could be simple attestation structures or more sophisticated financial dApps, social media dApps, etc. Each Resolver added to an Identity makes the Identity more informative.
Recovery Address: An Ethereum address (either an account or smart contract) that can be used to recover lost Identities as outlined in the Recovery section.
Destruction: In the event of irrecoverable loss of control of an Identity, Destruction is a contingency measure to permanently disable the Identity. It removes all Associated Addresses, Providers, and optionally Resolvers while preserving the Identity. Evidence of the existence of the Identity persists, while control over the Identity is nullified.
A digital identity in this proposal can be viewed as an omnibus account, containing more information about an identity than any individual identity application could. This omnibus identity is resolvable to an unlimited number of sub-identities called Resolvers. This allows an atomic entity, the Identity, to be resolvable to abstract data structures, the Resolvers. Resolvers recognize Identities by any of their Associated Addresses, or by their EIN.
The protocol revolves around claiming an Identity and managing Associated Addresses, Providers and Resolvers. Identities can delegate much or all of this responsibility to one or more Providers, or perform it directly from an Associated Address. Associated Addresses/Providers may add and remove Resolvers and Providers indiscriminately. Associated Addresses may only be added or removed with the appropriate permission.
The Identity Registry contains functionality to create new Identities and for existing Identities to manage their Associated Addresses, Providers, and Resolvers. It is important to note that this registry fundamentally requires transactions for every aspect of building out an Identity. However, recognizing the importance of accessibility to dApps and identity applications, we empower Providers to build out Identities on the behalf of users, without requiring users to pay gas costs. An example of this pattern, often referred to as a meta transactions, can be seen in the reference implementation.
Due to the fact that multiple addresses can be associated with a given identity (though not the reverse), Identities are denominated by EIN. This uint identifier can be encoded in QR format or mapped to more user-friendly formats, such as a string, in registries at the Provider or Resolver level.
The address management function consists of trustlessly connecting multiple user-owned Associated Addresses to an Identity. It does not give special status to any particular Associated Address, rather leaving this (optional) specification to identity applications built on top of the protocol - for instance, management, action, claim and encryption keys denominated in the ERC-725 standard, or identifiers and delegates as denominated in ERC-1056. This allows a user to access common identity data from multiple wallets while still:
Trustlessness in the address management function is achieved through a robust permissioning scheme. To add an Associated Address to an Identity, implicit permission from a transaction sender or explicit permission from a signature is required from 1) an address already within the registry and 2) an address to be claimed. Importantly, the transaction need not come from any particular address, as long as permission is established, which allows not only users but third parties (companies, governments, etc.) to bear the overhead of managing identities. To prevent a compromised Associated Address from unilaterally removing other Associated Addresses, it's only possible to remove an Associated Address by transacting or producing a signature from it.
All signatures required in ERC-1484 are designed per the ERC-191 v0 specification. To avoid replay attacks, all signatures must include a timestamp within a rolling lagged window of the current block.timestamp. For more information, see this best practices document in the reference implementation.
While the protocol allows users to directly call identity management functions, it also aims to be more robust and future-proof by allowing Providers, typically smart contracts, to perform identity management functions on a user's behalf. A Provider set by an Identity can perform address management and resolver management functions by passing a user's EIN in function calls.
A Resolver is any smart contract that encodes information which resolves to an Identity. We remain agnostic about the specific information that can be encoded in a resolver and the functionality that this enables. The existence of Resolvers is primarily what makes this ERC an identity protocol rather than an identity application. Resolvers resolve abstract data in smart contracts to an atomic entity, the Identity.
If users lose control over an Associated Address, the Recovery Address provides a fallback mechanism. Upon Identity creation, a Recovery Address is passed as a parameter by the creator. Recovery functionality is triggered in three scenarios:
1. Changing Recovery Address: If a recovery key is lost, an Associated Address/Provider can triggerRecoveryAddressChange/triggerRecoveryAddressChangeFor. To prevent malicious behavior from someone who has gained control of an Associated Address or Provider and is changing the Recovery Address to one under their control, this action triggers a 14 day challenge period during which the old Recovery Address may reject the change by triggering recovery. If the Recovery Address does not reject the change within 14 days, the Recovery Address is changed.
2. Recovery: Recovery occurs when a user recognizes that an Associated Address or the Recovery Address belonging to the user is lost or stolen. In this instance the Recovery Address must call triggerRecovery. This removes all Associated Addresses and Providers from the corresponding Identity and replaces them with an address passed in the function call. The Identity and associated Resolvers maintain integrity. The user is now responsible for adding the appropriate un-compromised addresses back to their Identity.
Importantly, the Recovery Address can be a user-controlled wallet or another address, such as a multisig wallet or smart contract. This allows for arbitrarily sophisticated recovery logic! This includes the potential for recovery to be fully compliant with standards such as DID.
3. Destruction
The Recovery scheme offers considerable power to a Recovery Address; accordingly, Destruction is a nuclear option to combat malicious control over an Identity when a Recovery Address is compromised. If a malicious actor compromises a user's Recovery Address and triggers recovery, any address removed in the Recovery process can call triggerDestruction within 14 days to permanently disable the Identity. The user would then need to create a new Identity, and would be responsible for engaging in recovery schemes for any identity applications built in the Resolver or Provider layers.
We considered many possible alternatives when devising the Recovery process outlined above. We ultimately selected the scheme that was most un-opinionated, modular, and consistent with the philosophy behind the Associated Address, Provider, and Resolver components. Still, we feel that it is important to highlight some of the other recovery options we considered, to provide a rationale as to how we settled on what we did.
High Level Concerns
Fundamentally, a Recovery scheme needs to be resilient to a compromised address taking control of a user's Identity. A secondary concern is preventing a compromised address from maliciously destroying a user's identity due to off-chain utility, which is not an optimal scenario, but is strictly better than if they've gained control.
Alternative 1: Nuclear Option
This approach would allow any Associated Address to destroy an Identity whenever another Associated Address is compromised. While this may seem severe, we strongly considered it because this ERC is an identity protocol, not an identity application. This means that though a user's compromised Identity is destroyed, they should still have recourse to whatever restoration mechanisms are available in each of their actual identities at the Resolver and/or Provider level. We ultimately dismissed this approach for two main reasons:
Associated AddressAlternative 2: Unilateral Address Removal via Providers
This would allow Associated Addresses/Providers to remove Associated Addresses without a signature from said address. This implementation would allow Providers to include arbitrarily sophisticated schemes for removing a rogue address - for instance, multi-sig requirements, centralized off-chain verification, user controlled master addresses, deferral to a jurisdictional contract, and more. To prevent a compromised Associated Address from simply setting a malicious Provider to remove un-compromised addresses, it would have required a waiting period between when a Provider is set and when they would be able to remove an Associated Address. We dismissed this approach because we felt it placed too high of a burden on Providers. If a Provider offered a sophisticated range of functionality to a user, but post-deployment a threat was found in the Recovery logic of the provider, Provider-specific infrastructure would need to be rebuilt. We also considered including a flag that would allow a user to decide whether or not a Provider may remove Associated Addresses unilaterally. Ultimately, we concluded that only allowing removal of Associated Addresses via the Recovery Address enables equally sophisticated recovery logic while separating the functionality from Providers, leaving less room for users to relinquish control to potentially flawed implementations.
We find that at a protocol layer, identities should not rely on specific claim or attestation structures, but should instead be a part of a trustless framework upon which arbitrarily sophisticated claim and attestation structures may be built.
The main criticism of existing identity solutions is that they're overly restrictive. We aim to limit requirements, keep identities modular and future-proof, and remain un-opinionated regarding any functionality a particular identity component may have. This proposal gives users the option to interact on the blockchain using an robust Identity rather than just an address.
The reference implementation for ERC-1484 may be found in NoahZinsmeister/ERC-1484.
Returns a bool indicating whether or not an Identity denominated by the passed EIN exists.
Returns a bool indicating whether or not the passed _address is associated with an Identity.
Returns the EIN associated with the passed _address. Throws if the address is not associated with an EIN.
Returns a bool indicating whether or not the passed _address is associated with the passed EIN.
Returns a bool indicating whether or not the passed provider has been set by the passed EIN.
Returns a bool indicating whether or not the passed resolver has been set by the passed EIN.
Returns the recoveryAddress, associatedAddresses, providers and resolvers of the passed EIN.
Creates an Identity, setting the msg.sender as the sole Associated Address. Returns the EIN of the new Identity.
Triggers event: IdentityCreated
Performs the same logic as createIdentity, but can be called by any address. This function requires a signature from the associatedAddress to ensure their consent.
Triggers event: IdentityCreated
Adds the addressToAdd to the EIN of the approvingAddress. The msg.sender must be either of the approvingAddress or the addressToAdd, and the signature must be from the other one.
Triggers event: AssociatedAddressAdded
Adds the addressToAdd to the EIN of the approvingAddress. Requires signatures from both the approvingAddress and the addressToAdd.
Triggers event: AssociatedAddressAdded
Removes the msg.sender as an Associated Address from its EIN.
Triggers event: AssociatedAddressRemoved
Removes the addressToRemove from its associated EIN. Requires a signature from the addressToRemove.
Triggers event: AssociatedAddressRemoved
Adds an array of Providers to the Identity of the msg.sender.
Triggers event: ProviderAdded
Performs the same logic as addProviders, but must be called by a Provider.
Triggers event: ProviderAdded
Removes an array of Providers from the Identity of the msg.sender.
Triggers event: ProviderRemoved
Performs the same logic as removeProviders, but is called by a Provider.
Triggers event: ProviderRemoved
Adds an array of Resolvers to the EIN of the msg.sender.
Triggers event: ResolverAdded
Performs the same logic as addResolvers, but must be called by a Provider.
Triggers event: ResolverAdded
Removes an array of Resolvers from the EIN of the msg.sender.
Triggers event: ResolverRemoved
Performs the same logic as removeResolvers, but must be called by a Provider.
Triggers event: ResolverRemoved
Initiates a change in the current recoveryAddress for the EIN of the msg.sender.
Triggers event: RecoveryAddressChangeTriggered
Initiates a change in the current recoveryAddress for a given EIN.
Triggers event: RecoveryAddressChangeTriggered
Triggers EIN recovery from the current recoveryAddress, or the old recoveryAddress if changed within the last 2 weeks.
Triggers event: RecoveryTriggered
Triggers destruction of an EIN. This renders the Identity permanently unusable.
Triggers event: IdentityDestroyed
MUST be triggered when an Identity is created.
MUST be triggered when an address is added to an Identity.
MUST be triggered when an address is removed from an Identity.
MUST be triggered when a provider is added to an Identity.
MUST be triggered when a provider is removed.
MUST be triggered when a resolver is added.
MUST be triggered when a resolver is removed.
MUST be triggered when a recovery address change is triggered.
MUST be triggered when recovery is triggered.
MUST be triggered when an Identity is destroyed.
Identities established under this standard consist of existing Ethereum addresses; accordingly, there are no backwards compatibility issues. Deployed, non-upgradeable smart contracts that wish to become Resolvers for Identities will need to write wrapper contracts that resolve addresses to EIN-denominated Identities.
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