Your identity

Securing my identity • Anonymity • Loss of key

How can I secure my identity?

You will soon be able to verify your identity

We are implementing an identity verification procedure that relies on ORCID, verification of your institutional email, and request of a community-bound identity verification token.

Publishing a Node requires you to employ a cryptographic key that we will link to your ORCID profile. As the controller of the key, only you can publish updates to the Node you created. There are a variety of wallet providers to choose from. We recommend Torus.

We take researcher identity security seriously and it is presently an unsolved problem. While we are a member organization of ORCID and are aware of steps taken to improve their security model, work remains to be done in this regard. Promising new approaches include verifiable credentials and community-bound access tokens. We are working on implementing both.

Will I need to verify my identity to publish a Node?

It won't be mandatory for the beta.

There are inevitable tradeoffs between security and accessibility. We currently opt for accessibility and will adjust our policy as we scale.

Can I publish my work anonymously?

Don't do it. It's too early.

In the future, you will be able to switch your identity to anonymous with ZK-proofs. ZK-proofs will allow you to prove you have certain credentials without revealing your identity. For this function, real identity is a requisite. This combines the best of both world, while minimising the threats of identity spoofing and trolls.

What if I lose access to my key?

We can rotate your Node access tokens to another key on the dPID registry.

This will require an identity verification procedure and is quite cumbersome for the time being. Our custodianship is a temporary measure as we implement new solutions that will enable your community or institution to act as your social recovery mechanism.