Uses · Shared identities
3 of 5 must agree.
Some identities belong to more than one person: a family trust, a club treasury, a small company. A shared identity can require, say, three of its five trustees to actively consent before it acts. It’s built, and waits on a legal review before it’s offered: not something to rely on yet.
How it would work
Each trustee signs, and nobody holds the whole thing.
- Each trustee has their own key. Nobody keeps a master key for the group.
- An action waits for enough signatures. A payment, or a change of who the trustees are, goes ahead only when the agreed number have actively said yes, each from their own device, each seeing what they’re agreeing to.
- Sites see who agreed. A site can check that enough of the trustees signed.
Closer to hand
The same idea helps if you lose a device.
People you choose could each hold one share of a key that opens your own wellknown.id, so that any three of five of them, together, can help you back in. Nobody holding a share could use it alone, and a recovery would wait several days, telling your existing devices first, so any of them could stop it.
Today, getting back in means a passkey, a recovery code for each persona, or kivi on your phone. How recovery by friends would work is on its own page: Friends hold the spare keys.
What to know
Where it stands.
- Built: the pieces it rests on: a key for each person, bonds between devices, and signed, end-to-end encrypted messages between them.
- Built: recovery through people you choose: Friends hold the spare keys.
- Built, in the preview: shared identities. Each member signs with their own key, and the group signs in through a permission given to one member, for one site and a time, that enough members sign. Sites see who agreed. It’s in kivi for the people trying the preview with us; kivi in the app stores won’t offer it until the same legal review as acting on someone’s behalf, so it isn’t something to rely on yet.
wellknown.id is in development. This page says what works now, and what is only planned.