In user profile systems, a namespace is used to avoid name collisions between multiple people that share the same name.
But when we watch how people collaborate, we notice that users don’t always leverage these namespaces. Instead, collaborators can use synchronous points of contact to share access to their documents. In other words, there is a moment where two collaborators are in person or online at the same time. For example, Google Drive offers a “share link” feature. Users can give access to the document in a video call, bypassing the namespace altogether. Collaborative applications could leverage this already-established mental model as the primary method to share access to resources. Then, we could remove this dependency on a namespace and use relationship-based identity instead.
Existing systems
- Email addresses, social media accounts
- Social proofs and distributed ledgers
- PAKE (Password Authenticated Key Exchange)