Comment by eric_bullington | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eric_bullington | Hacker News Reader

eric_bullington

I'm really enthusiastic about Keybase and am hopeful that it will succeed where others have failed to push mainstream adoption of PGP.

I've been trying to think of innovative applications of the Keybase API [1], which exposes much (most?) of the functionality available via the command line client.

I've got a few vague projects in mind but would love to hear more ideas. I've got a few Keybase invites left and will give them while they last to anyone who proposes an interesting use of the API, as long as Keybase doesn't object to this type of "contest" [2].

1. https://keybase.io/docs/api/1.0

2. maxtaco and malgorithms, please let me know if that's an inappropriate use of the invites and I'll rescind the offer.

Totally appropriate. I should say that we don't really want to be in the business of building general crypto apps ourselves, but Keybase identity proofs can make a bunch of things possible. Anything from financial transactions (send a BTC to twitter user X and know it's going to an address they control) to data access (let Keybase/github/twitter user Y access this server/file/whatever). The idea here is that any app can (1) ask Keybase for a user's key and identity proofs, and then (2) verify it all.

The API is not done, btw. If another call is needed, and you're really serious about building it, we will expand the API.

>send a BTC to twitter user X

Exactly. I've had my eye on Keybase issue #218 [1], and I'm hoping that you all will provide a way for users to provide a confirmed Bitcoin payment address.

You could just generate a unique message for the user to sign with the address using their Bitcoin client. Most bitcoin-qt and most other GUIs even have a menu option now for signing, so it should be easy for users to do.

To preserve privacy, a user could even post a stealth address, to the extent that stealth addresses are supported in the user's client software. Most clients aren't there yet, but I think more will start supporting stealth addresses this year.

1. https://github.com/keybase/keybase-issues/issues/218

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