# Can Cardano improve social networks? **URL:** \ **Category:** Education\ **Created:** [10 October 2022 13:03 UTC](https://forum.cardano.org/t/can-cardano-improve-social-networks/108817 "2022-10-10T13:03:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 3
**Author:** ![HeptaSean](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex023/user_avatar/forum.cardano.org/heptasean/32/82306_2.png) [@HeptaSean](https://forum.cardano.org/u/HeptaSean)\ **Post date:** [10 October 2022 15:00 UTC](https://forum.cardano.org/t/can-cardano-improve-social-networks/108817/3 "2022-10-10T15:00:19Z")
In the intoduction, you say that the problem is centralisation, but in the rest of the article the topic is only logging in and signing messages on still centralised services. There already were attempts to decentralise social networks – Mastodon probably being the most successful, but by far not the only one. They did not need any blockchain at all for it. Nevertheless, they did not replace any of the existing networks. I’d say for social, more than for technological reasons: People just want to find a critical share of their peer groups on one, centralised platform. (Ironically, the preferred platforms of most crypto projects – e.g., Telegram and Discord – are rather less open and very much centralised. The only “decentralised” thing about Telegram is – in an interpretation sacrificing all meaning – that it makes a pose out of not bowing to regulations and letting Nazis run rampant unblocked.) Logging in and signing with cryptographic credentials is nothing new that would need a blockchain, let alone a cryptocurrency blockchain. [TLS client certificates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security#Client-authenticated_TLS_handshake), [S/MIME](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME), and [OpenPGP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#OpenPGP) have been around for decades. Nobody using them was more of a usability issue. And maybe it would benefit the world more if wallets would be developed to finally use them without any coins and chains attached. Does such a wallet – irrespective if shiny, new, hype blockchain or good, old Internet standards – protect users better against being hacked? Well, given the plethora of people scammed in crypto, the need to tell them on every welcome message, in blinking GIFs, and as first part of any support answer to not share their seed phrases, and they still do it, I’d make a question mark on that. Does the blockchain magic in there give us some assurance about identities? > [@](#): > > You must reliably associate the identity with the public key. The public key must be available to everyone for authentication. How to do it reliably? Let’s explain the basic principles of decentralized identity (DID). You can think of a DID as a handle or a name. A DID is associated with a DID document. It contains data that describes the public cryptographic keys, pseudonymous biometrics, and other methods that an individual or entity can use to authenticate itself. The DID document may contain a public key to authenticate messages from the DID owner. This paragraph does _not_ describe how such an association is made _reliable_. The association is just _stated_ here. Anybody could state to be me (and if they have access to it also include some of my – or maybe their? – biometrics to seem extra trustworthy). This has to be verified by someone. In the classical cryptographic solutions, it was done – rather unsuccessful – by webs of trust and – rather successful – by certification authorities. To roll something like that out to the masses, it should probably be done by your local government office – or in countries without a trustworthy administration by the church or another widely respected authority. And if we need an authority, anyway, what do we need the blockchain for? By the way 1: One of the companies seemingly being a bit further with their interpretation of “SSI” uses either the data of telecommunication companies or the machine-readable identities of governments for assuring that I am me: [https://iamx.id/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2022-02-IAMX-Factsheet.pdf](https://iamx.id/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2022-02-IAMX-Factsheet.pdf) There is no win. Please, let governments directly assure identities without wasting resources on blockchains! By the way 2: Do you have sources that Atala Prism is production-ready? The website still is all marketing and mock-ups. I’d love to read some specs and documentation. > [@](#): > > DID cannot be created without blockchain. By the way 3: This is false! [https://academy.affinidi.com/do-you-need-blockchain-for-enabling-ssi-452d62b34890](https://academy.affinidi.com/do-you-need-blockchain-for-enabling-ssi-452d62b34890) [https://weh.wtf/ssi.html](https://weh.wtf/ssi.html) Or directly from the spec – [https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/): > [@](#): > > Verifiable data registries > In order to be resolvable to [DID documents](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/#dfn-did-documents), [DIDs](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/#dfn-decentralized-identifiers) are typically recorded on an underlying system or network of some kind. Regardless of the specific technology used, any such system that supports recording [DIDs](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/#dfn-decentralized-identifiers) and returning data necessary to produce [DID documents](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/#dfn-did-documents) is called a [verifiable data registry](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/#dfn-verifiable-data-registry). Examples include [distributed ledgers](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/#dfn-distributed-ledger-technology), **decentralized file systems, databases of any kind, peer-to-peer networks, and other forms of trusted data storage.** This concept is further elaborated upon in [8. Methods](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/#methods). “databases of any kind” … you don’t need to waste every full node’s disk space if a replicated database on government servers is enough. --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.cardano.org/t/can-cardano-improve-social-networks/108817)._