Multichain Identity Indexer

[vikiival]

Project Abstract

The Multichain Identity Indexer - Identics is a GraphQL service designed to streamline the interaction with Identity pallet that was originally on Relay-chain and now resides on People Chain. This service acts as a robust data layer for socially-oriented dApps, leveraging the simplicity of GraphQL and REST API. The indexer addresses the challenge of querying identity information for multiple accounts in parallel and bridges the gap between historical data on the Relay chain and real-time updates on People Chain.

Grant level

• Level 1: Up to $10,000, 2 approvals
• Level 2: Up to $30,000, 3 approvals
• Level 3: Unlimited, 5 approvals (for >$100k: Web3 Foundation Council approval)

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[semuelle]

Thanks for the application, @vikiival. Other than the use case you have been working on, I'm wondering who or what would require indexing of the history of identities?

[vikiival]

Other than the use case you have been working on, I'm wondering who or what would require indexing of the history of identities?

Hey,
that is a very good question!
I have split it into several topics that could leverage the identity history

1. Governance Analytics & Reputation Systems

• Tracking how long accounts have maintained verified identities before participating in important governance votes (any opengov platform)
• Building reputation systems that consider the longevity and stability to identify trusted community members

2. Security & Fraud Prevention

• Detecting suspicious patterns of identity changes or clearances that might indicate malicious behavior
• Helping registrars review an account's identity history before providing judgements
• Enabling apps to flag accounts that frequently change or clear their identities

3. Social Network Analysis

• Understanding the evolution of relationships between accounts (social graph)
• Analyzing the growth of identities within the ecosystem

4. Economic Research & Analysis

• Studying how identity verification impacts user behavior and economic activity
• Understanding how identity systems are used across different market conditions

TL;DR

There is a lot of services that could leverage indetity indexer, to prevent fraudulent activity on their platforms (scams, phishing, impersonation).
Additionally it opens a new potential for research purposes and spot patterns.
Last but not least, we do believe that using data from Identics could be used for novel applications/libraries such as - https://openrank.com

[semuelle]

Hi @vikiival, thanks for the thorough reply and sorry for the long wait. Some of the use cases and future plans you listed seem very niche to me, but looking at ENS, there is still a lot of room for improvement regarding identities in our ecosystem, so I am happy to approve your application and share it with the rest of the committee.

[Noc2]

It would be nice to get open-source software like this potentially funded via the treasury (see for example Open Source Developer Grants Bounty Program), given that the treasury is the long-term funding solution for these things. But I'm happy to also support it here.

[takahser]

@vikiival This looks very interesting.

However, I have a couple of questions:

• Will it be possible to query a complete list of available identities, along with additional metadata like their age or registration timestamps? This could be valuable for features like airdrops.
• Once developed, do you plan to host the indexer as a public-facing API for broader community use? This could be especially useful for smaller/early-stage dApp dev teams, since they wouldn't have to set up their own infrastructure.
• Will this indexer simplify running registrars? If that’s a popular use case, it might make sense to add a demo project showcasing all the API calls needed for registrar-related extrinsics.

[vikiival]

• Will it be possible to query a complete list of available identities, along with additional metadata like their age or registration timestamps? This could be valuable for features like airdrops.

@takahser Amazing idea!
Yes, Identity entity will contain createdAt: DateTime! @index and updatedAt: DateTime! @index along with historical changes.
It is a perfect use-case for loyal Polkadot / Kusama users.

• Once developed, do you plan to host the indexer as a public-facing API for broader community use? This could be especially useful for smaller/early-stage dApp dev teams, since they wouldn't have to set up their own infrastructure.

We plan to host Identics on SubSquid infra and Hono API as a public good solution. I agree that identity management takes a lot of precious dev time.

• Will this indexer simplify running registrars? If that's a popular use case, it might make sense to add a demo project showcasing all the API calls needed for registrar-related extrinsic.

That's a very good and valid question. As far as I know, currently, registrars have to listen to the RPC events and check for judgement requests. Additionally, they need to parse the data from the RPC node (such as mail, Twitter, etc.) to reach the user.
Identics simplify this as all registrars must do is subscribe to the GraphQL server. Changes will be pushed to the subscribed registrars as soon as a block is finalised.

We will also add WIKI with queries/examples that can be used.

Misc

Can I ask @semuelle and @Noc2 for approval again? Seems that force-push dismissed the approval

[takahser]

@vikiival thanks for your prompt response.

We will also add WIKI with queries/examples that can be used.

Could you add this to the proposal? After that I'd be happy to add my approval as well.

Btw, you don't have to worry about the dismissal of approvals - as long as you don't remove things reviewers would usually just re-approve.

[vikiival]

Could you add this to the proposal? After that I'd be happy to add my approval as well.

Added as delivery 0e (Line 170)

Btw, you don't have to worry about the dismissal of approvals - as long as you don't remove things reviewers would usually just re-approve.

Oh, I did not know ^-^.

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