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Comment by westurner | Hacker News Reader

blockchain-certificates/cert-verifier-js: https://github.com/blockchain-certificates/cert-verifier-js

> A library to enable parsing and verifying a Blockcert. This can be used as a node package or in a browser. The browserified script is available as verifier.js.

https://github.com/blockchain-certificates/cert-issuer

> The cert-issuer project issues blockchain certificates by creating a transaction from the issuing institution to the recipient on the Bitcoin blockchain that includes the hash of the certificate itself.

... We could/should also store X.509 cert hashes in a blockchain.

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Exactly what part of such a service would benefit from anything related to a blockchain?

Are you asking me why blockcerts stores certs in a blockchain?

Or whether using certs (really long passwords) is a better option than submitting unhashed passwords on a given datetime to a third-party in order to make sure they're not in the pwned passwords tables?

I was just reading about a company trying to make self-sovereign identity including actual certs (like degrees and such) an accessible and widely applicable/acceptable technology using Ethereum blockchain. I thought it showed some real practicality and promise. I believe it begins with U- forgot the name.Perhaps UPort? Anyhow, I'd be interested in hearing from anyone here about why that might be a bad or good idea. I don't personally have the skill in that tech to know.

Known Traveler Digital Identity system is a "new model for airport screening and security that uses biometrics, cryptography and distributed ledger technologies."

Blockcerts are for academic credentials, AFAIU.

[EDIT]

Existing blockchains have a limited TPS (transactions per second) for writes; but not for reads. Sharding and layer-2 (sidechains) do not have the same assurances. I'm sure we all remember how cryptokitties congested the txpool during the Bitcoin futures launch.

Thank you. I looked into "clear", one of the airport known traveler ID systems. (I'm assuming there are others) It's pretty cool/concerning. Takes ~ 8 min to load a traveler into its system. Thanks for reminding me of TPS---the info on read vs write.

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