2 min read

The Mummy

The Mummy
Photo by Nick Fewings / Unsplash

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I love the Cursed Knowledge episodes of the Epsilon Theory podcast:

Concise, opinionated, and educational.

Business idea

Proof of ownership-as-a- service: the ability to prove to anyone at any time that you own something but you control with fine grain who sees the proof, for how long and how much you have to reveal about yourself. We already see this used on the Apple Wallet/Google Wallet: "you own the ticket to board this plane". Now, make it super easy to use and open-source, hosted on IPFS, etc. Not gated by Apple or Google. You could prove ownership to your Twitter fanbase, or to an officer, without having to reveal who you are. Simply because, behind the scenes, you own the private keys to a wallet.

You might say "isn't this what the blockchain is, essentially?" Yes. But it's still too early:

  • The average layperson won't know to use one blockchain or the other to prove ownership, this will need to be promoted
  • Control over "who sees what" is inexistent: anyone who's shared their NFT wallet online can become an extortion target. There have to be more ways to selectively share without giving so much of your identity that you are putting yourself at risk.

To explore

  • https://lightning.page: non-custodial, decentralized, permissionless WebTorrent content and Livestreaming.
    Based on the Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN). What is lightning? It is the answer to "bitcoin fees are too high for small purchases". It also helps with transaction per second performance and improves privacy. It has been around for years. Strike uses it. Strike is the company/app at the forefront of El Salvador's bitcoinization. LN belongs to the "Layer 2" category of blockchain projects: a network-wide improvement that couldn't exist without the underlying bitcoin infrastructure.
  • Sarcophagus: a decentralized dead man's switch. I assume this is a smart contract setup that releases a wallet or wallet content to specific recipients when a party stops proving liveness. For example, one might want to set this up so their crypto holdings get transitioned to their loved ones if they pass.

To cover in the next episode

  • Arweave