Christopher Allen

This is just the beginning. We plan to release more tools and more courses such as:

– Learning BDK from the Command Line
– Learning FROST from the Command Line

If you’d like to help sponsor these works, let’s talk! [8/8] github.com/sponsor/Bloc...

Future Development: Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures (FROST) Docs & information on Blockchain Commons specifications.

If you want to know more about FROST, see our FROST developers page, which also includes links to four previous FROST meetings. [7/8] developer.blockchaincommons.com/frost/

Musings of a Trust Architect: Edge Identifiers & Cliques Since the mid-1990s, I’ve been advocating for the creation of secure digital infrastructures that protect human rights, civil liberties, and human dignity online. My mission has always been to decentr...

FROST doesn’t just improve resilience (e.g. quorum signing despite share loss).

It also opens up new decentralized patterns:
- distributed issuance
- distributed revocation
- edge identifiers & cliques (www.blockchaincommons.com/musings/musi...)
- and much more. [6/8]

Though this demo is focused on Bitcoin, our CLI tools also support other curves like ed25519. That means you can explore a wide range of FROST-based use cases beyond Bitcoin — for any Schnorr-based signature scheme. [5/8]

WHAT? FROST in Bitcoin Gordian Meeting
WHEN? Wed., August 6th, 10am PT
WHERE? Zoom link & agenda: groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev...
or subscribe for updates: www.blockchaincommons.com/subscribe/
[4/8]

GitHub - BlockchainCommons/Learning-Bitcoin-from-the-Command-Line: A complete course for learning Bitcoin programming and usage from the command A complete course for learning Bitcoin programming and usage from the command - BlockchainCommons/Learning-Bitcoin-from-the-Command-Line

This CLI playground gives you an approachable, hands-on way to experiment with FROST. It’s based on our successful "Learning Bitcoin from the Command Line" model. We think it’s the best way to really understand the opportunities offered by FROST. [3/8] github.com/BlockchainCo...

Thanks to a new grant from @HRF, we’ve been building tools to make decentralized FROST signatures easier for devs. Our demo will showcase how to use these tools to sign a Bitcoin Taproot (BIP-340) Schnorr transaction using FROST. [2/8]

FROST is a powerful next-gen multisig protocol for Bitcoin — more efficient, more resilient. Join us next Wednesday 10am PDT for a live demo + dev discussion on using FROST with BDK and Taproot via our new CLI playground. 🧵… [1/8]

Sponsor @BlockchainCommons on GitHub Sponsors Blockchain Commons is a "not-for-profit" social benefit corporation committed to open source , advocating for the creation of open, interoperable, secure & compassionate digital infrastructure to e...

And of course you can always support @blockchaincomns itself by becoming a financial patron, to help us fight for our principles. [13/13] github.com/sponsors/Blo...

Join the Blockchain Commons Conversation Blockchain Commons supports the creation of open & interoperable, secure & compassionate digital infrastructure.

Join me at the @blockchaincomns Gordian Developer Meetings, propose a topic where we can hash out these issues. [12/13] www.blockchaincommons.com/subscribe/

If you want to support true decentralization, amplify this message. Talk about what's wrong, what you don't like, and how you'd like to see it resolved. [11/13]

Musings of a Trust Architect: When Technical Standards Meet Geopolitical Reality Reflections on recent conversations about digital identity, sovereignty, and the erosion of foundational principles Echoes from Geneva I wasn’t present at the Global Digital Collaboration conference...

I talk about all of this and more in my newest Musings ... but this isn't just Musings. We need solutions. We need action. And we need it now. [10/13] www.blockchaincommons.com/musings/gdc25/

The self-sovereign identity community is caught between philosophical purity and practical irrelevance. We're at a time of reckoning where we're going to succeed with our ideals or fail. (Spoiler: Not looking great for the good guys right now.) [9/13]

This isn't just this one conference. We're having increasing problems even defining what decentralization is within our community. [8/13]

Echoes from History II: The Dangers of eIDAS This article, like “Echoes from History: Designing Self-Sovereign Identity with Care”, is drawn from a book I have in process called FOREMEMBRANCE, which chronicles how identity was abused in WWII and...

As for eIDAS and EUDI, I've written about their shortcomings before. [7/13] www.blockchaincommons.com/articles/eid...

But Germany is simultaneously cutting deals with Google for a ZKP library—and though it could be a theoretical great foundation for our work, it currently ties you to the Google surveillance apparatus. [6/13]

Europe is doing superificially better. The Swiss presentation was all about privacy, democratic involvement, and achieving public buy-in. These are the right things to rah-rah about. [5/13]

On the other hand, you had Google and Apple. That's our representation? Corporations with their own interests!? (With those interests mostly being making money and achieving corporate lock-in.) [4/13]

GDC25 encapsulated it perfectly with its representatives for the US. On the one hand, you had a RealID proponent—all 9/11 and Patriot Act rah-rah. State control, not decentralization. [3/13]

Bottom line: we're seeing a lot of lip service to decentralized principles but applications are instead inverting our goals of independence and self-sufficiency. [2/13]

Musings of a Trust Architect: When Technical Standards Meet Geopolitical Reality Reflections on recent conversations about digital identity, sovereignty, and the erosion of foundational principles Echoes from Geneva I wasn’t present at the Global Digital Collaboration conference...

Reports have been coming back from the Global Digital Collaboration conference (GDC25), and they're pretty discouraging for those of us in the decentralized tech community. I wrote about a lot of the problems today. [1/13] www.blockchaincommons.com/musings/gdc25/

Sponsor @BlockchainCommons on GitHub Sponsors Blockchain Commons is a "not-for-profit" social benefit corporation committed to open source , advocating for the creation of open, interoperable, secure & compassionate digital infrastructure to e...

To support the next generation of self-sovereign identity and other self-sovereign technologies, become a sponsor of @BlockchainComns (or talk to me about a more direct relationship). [11/11] github.com/sponsors/Blo...

Join the Blockchain Commons Conversation Blockchain Commons supports the creation of open & interoperable, secure & compassionate digital infrastructure.

Sign up for our Gordian Developer Meetings too, as we'll likely discuss fair witnessing at a future meeting. (They're the first Wednesday of most months. Today at 10am PT we're discussing provenance marks.) [10/11] www.blockchaincommons.com/subscribe/

Musings of a Trust Architect: Fair Witnessing in a Decentralized World ABSTRACT: “Fair Witnessing” is a new approach for asserting and interpreting digital claims in a way that mirrors real-world human trust: through personal observation, contextual disclosure, and progr...

Read my article on fair witnessing for all the details. [9/11] www.blockchaincommons.com/musings/musi...

Even if the intent of Verifiable Credentials were better understood, the confusion reveals a gap in their current usage. We need context, and we need to be able to keep that context private until it's needed. [8/11]

Gordian Envelope Elision allows a fair witness to release information over time, to release information to certain people, or to release just a proof of information. [7/11]

Gordian Envelope Docs & information on Blockchain Commons specifications.

Blockchain Commons has a solution for this: Gordian Envelope. It's a way to elide information while maintaining signatures and still being to prove the information exists. [6/11] developer.blockchaincommons.com/envelope/

The major issue with making Fair Witnessing a reality is privacy. Context can offer a LOT of information, and you don't necessarily want to release it all to everyone. [5/11]

But a Fair Witness statement also needs to hold context. Who is the witness? What is their expertise? What are their unconscious biases? These are required so that when the Witness signs a statements, others can decide what it means. [4/11]

Fair Witnessing is an idea from Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. It says that statements should be precise and unbiased, which is a simple enough start. [3/11]