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matrix-org / matrix-spec

The Matrix protocol specification
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Portable identities #1792

Open ara4n opened 2 months ago

ara4n commented 2 months ago

Rather than having to go full on with portable accounts (ie migrating data between instances), portable identities a la bluesky/atproto might be a nice first step to let folks own their domain without running a full matrix server.

So they would just set up a DNS or well-known on their domain to delegate their domain to a given existing server.

This would be coupled with pseudo IDs under the hood, presumably.

MTRNord commented 2 months ago

Wasn't the whole goal of portable accounts to also accommodate, especially, people NOT able to self-host and trying matrix? It feels like this proposal would be limited to people able to use DNS or well-known, aka having a server they can host from (Or use GitHub/GitLab/etc to prove identity). It feels somewhat like a broken from the start concept considering the huge amount of people not able to ever use it.

MTRNord commented 2 months ago

(Separate comment since separate concern)

Another thing coming immediately into my thoughts are things like work accounts. How would those even work with this concept? Or even multiple people per HS? Does a HS with that need a subdomain per user? Is it not supported? Are people meant to bring their own Domain to use Matrix? ("Nerdfactor"? Majority of people dont have a domain)

This feels a lot like a proof of identity system thought backwards than the "usual" (aka keybase or alike) system.

ara4n commented 2 months ago

Wasn't the whole goal of portable accounts to also accommodate, especially, people NOT able to self-host and trying matrix?

yup? and this isn't replacing portable accounts; it's a separate concept. Yes, it requires the identities still to have a domain. For instance, it'd allow renaming homeservers to happen immediately, by saying from now on @matthew:matrix.org should be thought of as @matthew:example.com - without the need for pseudo IDs or crypto IDs landing.

Another thing coming immediately into my thoughts are things like work accounts. How would those even work with this concept? Or even multiple people per HS? Does a HS with that need a subdomain per user? Is it not supported? Are people meant to bring their own Domain to use Matrix?

This isn't an MSC; I haven't proposed solutions to this. But a simple approach could be something like https://example.com/.well-known/matrix/forward/@matthew returning { id: '@matthew:matrix.org' } as a way of saying "from now, on please treat @matthew:example.com in rooms as if it were actually saying @matthew:matrix.org.

MTRNord commented 2 months ago

Thanks for the reply. That clears things up. I was aware of it not being an msc but I was curious/wondering if this was something you/whoever writes an msc for this is aware of :)