Themes and Notes Background Research Report: DID User Research

This report draws on insights from the initial proposal to identify key themes, open questions, and foundational concepts for developing a Decentralized ID (DID) system, particularly focusing on its application within collaboration technologies.

Key Themes Identified in DID User Research

The research highlights several overarching themes driving the need for a Decentralized ID:

• Addressing Redundant Identity Management: A significant motivation for building a DID is to eliminate the repetitive work undertaken by every new venture to build its own login and permission management system, especially when connecting multiple credentials like Telegram, GitHub, and email. This redundancy is described as "super redundant work we do over and over".
• Improving User Experience (UX) and Reducing Friction: The current landscape forces users to "create an account over and over" across various applications, leading to significant UX friction. DID aims to solve this by allowing users to have the same account across apps, thereby simplifying the login process and interaction.
• Unifying Identities for Collaboration and Reputation: Collaboration tools, such as TogetherCrew, have a specific need to connect multiple identifiers (e.g., Discord, GitHub) to merge data for analytics and assign a unified reputation score. The DID system is envisioned to create a "stable ID to build reputation on" and facilitate the "aggregation of reputation". This directly tackles vulnerabilities like Sybil attacks in token voting based on earned reputation.
• Promoting Data Ownership and Gradual Privacy Control: A core ethical consideration is creating an identity that the user truly owns. DID should allow users to selectively share details with consent. This includes enabling "gradual exposure of your info to the fluid teams you are in" and setting granular visibility levels (what humans, AI, and protocols can see; what's visible versus zero-knowledge).
• Enhancing Interoperability and Ecosystem Integration: DID is conceived as an extensible identity that allows users to add other accounts and log in with any of them, making it "easier to integrate tools in our ecosystem". This also raises questions about whether it could become a protocol used by CRMs or a "smart contract that lives in wallets that gives them fluid and interesting access to tools and data".
• Potential for New Product and Monetization Models: DID tool itself could evolve into a product, potentially "charging per API call" for its services. It is also seen as a way to "learn to originate tools internally".

Open Questions

• Strategy & Justification:
  • A primary question is "Why would we ever build our own, when there SO many ID tools out there"?
  • The core rationale is to solve the "super redundant work" of building login and permission systems for multiple credentials.
  • Investigate how to help people link multiple credentials to existing or new wallets.
  • Explore the concept of a "decentralized version of [Single Sign-On (SSO)]".
• Market Analysis (High-Level):

  • Held here:

    DID Market Research

  • A "complete market and competitive analysis would take a whole year," so the focus should be on leveraging existing market scans and refreshing the list of current tools.

  • Polygon ID, Adresso, and GitCoin Passport ( "does this, but doesn’t do it right" in terms of automatically detecting community tool usage).

  • There is a recognized issue that "There’s no real value proposition for these tools today, too fragmented".

• Collaboration Tool Specifics:
  • A crucial area of study is "What do collaboration tools need in a Decentralized ID system?".
  • Specific "REAL vulnerabilities in CollabTech" include the Sybil attack, which can undermine token voting based on earned reputation.
  • DID needs to address these vulnerabilities and facilitate trust mechanisms.
• Product Definition & Naming:
  • The proposed product concepts revolve around a "simple login widget" that enables extensible identity, multi-account login, and easy implementation.
  • Concepts for a profile/identity hub include "Yellow Pages," "ToolBox," or "ToolBelt," where users can consolidate all their IDs.
  • The naming of the login or profile needs to "NOT be RnDAO!!".
  • The research also considers if social recovery could be leveraged since the system might be "baked into a social graph".
• Technical & Trust Considerations:
  • Understanding the "math" needed to trust a tool and "how they are achieving their claims" is important.
  • A DID could potentially allow direct money transfers to an email address that show up in a user's wallet.
  • It should be able to infer other handles (e.g., knowing Telegram handle leads to knowing other handles) based on defined rules.