Identity on the Blockchain

There is an interesting thread on r/ethereum sub-reddit asking what the hell happened to identity on the blockchain. I'll share my reply here:

"As with most things, it seems like projects seeking to be *the* blockchain identity solution are doing too much. And as a result the solutions they're building are too complicated.

Much of the complexity seems to stem from trying to anchor real-name identity onto the blockchain. Imho that is such a complete mis-step.

For anyone that actually uses any dApps today, the wallet they're using to sign Txs with is effectively creating an identity for them already.

With dApps like Cent at https://beta.cent.co users are receiving ETH to reply to bounties. In other words, they're getting paid to work. And their work, if it's good enough to get them paid, is linked to the actual payment they received. As long as they control their private keys, they are the only ones who can prove that particular identity and past work.

Each user's payslip effectively becomes and identity and resume when viewed in that light. That's pretty incredible.

With that realization, there are of course some pretty clear if non-trivial UI tweaks that are needed to make this resume/identity easier to use (e.g. ERC-721 Avatar that carries this info, a way to organize the work attached to the financial meta-data, etc...).

If blockchain identity is approached from this angle, users will be able to get a way more approachable and workable solution way quicker than they will if they wait for solutions from the projects you mentioned. That's my opinion at least."