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Why the downzap?
Truth hurts
auth.shock.networkSo basically what you're saying is signer centralization, but with secondary key auth, is a better solution than subkey delegation in the protocol?
PS: docs goes to a generic page - can I run this today? I need to get rid of this AVM with Amber because it keeps draining my laptop battery 😬
Yes, clients particularly on mobile can't reasonably do the work for delegation, they're pretty unusable as is. This has already failed with NIP-26 I think it was and other iterations of delegation.
Centralizing signers is still decentralized of course, it just becomes part of the self-hosted stack.
A policy engine on the remote signer also allows for much more granular controls than delegation ever could. I think of it like firewall rules, can this client sign? what kinds can it sign? to which p tags? How many sigs per day?
Those rules can then be defined into categories, perhaps your social client has a social scope while your wallet client has a wallet scope... each only with specific kinds/p-tags or perhaps even relays.
can I run this today?
We're using in production only as an email-auth bridge so there's no self-hosted code yet, just the SDK that points to our instance and the granularity stuff is not in the policy dashboard yet. It's still proof of concept to inform the initial open protocol but we're getting back to it after the next Pub/Wallet release.
If Nostr really breaks out I expect a large percentage of users will use it through Apple/Google still, just as people use custodians for Bitcoin today... the same problem exist: key management
Key management is an unsolvable problem that goes back to 70s and 80s, and pretty much everything you touch in software today is an abstraction around it. User/password, SSL Certificates, Email challenges, 2FA, Biometrics, and so on.
The bigger picture is that it's more like the TCP/IP of identity, and an ideal state means Nostr based apps don't have to integrate Apple or Google auth, Apple or Google would in effect provide a standardized remote signer functionality with their accounts.
Just like Bitcoin, again, optionality is what matters. Key-based identity offers a "credible exit" from those systems where desired, leaving room for an intransigent minority that keeps the whole system in check.
Nsec custodians and hosted policy engines are actually a requirement for Nostr to succeed, because enterprises (and even small businesses with a social media intern) need these. Without enterprises a critical threshold of economic activity cannot find its way to Nostr.
Because Nostr apps have this open standard and no need to integrate Apple or Google auth, it breaks up the identity duopoly too. https://auth.shock.network is the proof of concept for a policy engine protocol (same mental model of bunkers, but actually usable)