Identities are foundational to Hellar Platform. They provide a familiar, easy-to-use way for users to interact and identify one another using names rather than complicated cryptocurrency identifiers such as public key hashes.
Identities are separate from names and can be thought of as a lower-level primitive that provides the foundation for various user-facing functionality. An identity consists primarily of one or more public keys recorded on the platform chain that can be used to control a user’s profile and sign their documents. Each identity also has a balance of credits that is established by locking funds on layer 1. These credits are used to pay fees associated with the state transitions used to perform actions on the platform.
👍 Identities HIP
The Identities Hellar Improvement Proposal (HIP) provides more extensive background information and details.
In order to create an identity, a user pays the network to store their public key(s) on the platform chain. Since new users may not have existing Hellar funds, an invitation process will allow users to create an identity despite lacking their own funds. The invitation process will effectively separate the funding and registration steps that are required for any new identity to be created.
Once an identity is created, its credit balance is used to pay for activity (e.g. use of applications). The topup process provides a way to add additional funds to the balance when necessary.
📘 Mainnet Faucet
On Mainnet, a Hellar faucet will be available. It dispenses small amounts to enable all users to directly acquire the funds necessary to create an identity and username.
First, a sponsor (which could be a business, another person, or even the same user who is creating the identity) spends Hellar in a transaction to create an invitation. The transaction contains one or more outputs which lock some Hellar funds to establish credits within Hellar platform.
After the transaction is broadcast and confirmed, the sponsor sends information about the invitation to the new user. This may be done as a hyperlink that the core wallet understands, or as a QR code that a mobile wallet can scan. Once the user has the transaction data from the sponsor, they can use it to fund an identity create state transition within Hellar platform.
Users who already have Hellar funds can act as their own sponsor if they wish, using the same steps listed here.
The identity balance topup process works in a similar way to the initial identity creation funding. As with identity creation, a lock transaction is created on the layer 1 core blockchain. This lock transaction is then referenced in the identity topup state transition which increases the identity’s balance by the designated amount.
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Since anyone can topup either their own account or any other account, application developers can easily subsidize the cost of using their application by topping up their user’s identities.
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Added in Hellar Platform Protocol v1.0.0
Identity owners may find it necessary to update their identity keys periodically for security purposes. The identity update state transition enables users to add new keys and disable existing ones.
Identity updates only require the creation of a state transition that includes a list of keys being added and/or disabled. Platform retains disabled keys so that any existing data they signed can still be verified while preventing them from signing new data.