wellknown.id Self-issued identity · Identité auto-émise

Uses · Your key

Your key, your seal.

Your wellknown.id is a secret made on your own device the first time you use it. From it your device makes a separate key for every site, and every key engraves its own seal, so you can recognise yours at a glance.

How it works All the uses

How it works

One secret, many keys.

  • A seed, made on your device. It’s 32 random bytes, made at your first sign-in. wellknown.id’s store only ever holds it encrypted, under keys only you have, filed under names it can’t link to you.
  • A key for every site. Your device derives one from the seed and the site’s name, so the key a site knows you by differs from every other site’s. Its public half is a did:key.
  • A seal for every key. Each key engraves its own seal, drawn from the key itself. Same key, same seal.

Personas

More than one of you, if you want.

  • Each persona is a seed of its own: Persona Work, Persona Home. Each has its own key at every site, so no site, and not wellknown.id, can tell two of your personas belong together.
  • One passkey opens them all. It opens your keyring, which holds every persona you have.
  • A recovery code opens one persona, and is printed with its name. So a work laptop can be given Persona Work and nothing else.
  • Linking two is up to you. Two personas are joined at a site only if you, or the site with your agreement, link them.

Opening it

Several ways in, and none of them an account.

  • A passkey from Google, Apple, a password manager, or kivi on your phone. Syncing the passkey is how a new device gets back in with no further step.
  • A recovery code for each persona, kept somewhere safe.
  • kivi on your phone, which keeps your default persona behind its own lock and can hand a persona to a browser.
  • None of these is required on its own, so your identity doesn’t depend on any one company. wellknown.id says plainly when you have only one way back in.

What to know

What works today, and what doesn’t yet.

  • Works now: the seed, passkeys, recovery codes, a key per site, and personas: add, rename, make default, set aside and forget them at wellknown.id/you or in kivi on the web.
  • On phones, personas need a new build of kivi, written and not yet run on a phone.
  • A browser that can’t use passkeys this way (Firefox on Linux, say) keeps the seed itself. Clearing its data for wellknown.id deletes it, so a recovery code is worth making.
  • Built: getting back in through people you choose: Friends hold the spare keys.
  • Still to come: a security key or an NFC ring as another way in, and getting back in through accounts you already have.

wellknown.id is in development. This page says what works now, and nothing more.