Will I be able to migrate from DNS-based identifier to decentralized identifier smoothly?
DID(Decentralized Identifier) is the biggest advantage that zot protocol has but activitypub doesn’t yet.
Zot protocol’s disadvantage is that all zot implementations are written in PHP. I don’t like PHP because multiple PHP softwares may want different configurations in php.ini. At least, many activitypub implementations are written in better programming langauges like Rust, python, Go, and Ruby.
If activitypub implementations acquired DID, zot wouldn’t look so sexy to me.
There’s nothing preventing you or anyone else from writing an implementation in a better language. The only thing that matters is that the right sequence of bytes ends up being sent over the wire.
And doesn’t zot protocol still rely on DNS and HTTP? From what I understand, it allows you to log in with your account on a foreign instance, so your home instance still has complete authority over your account, and its domain is still part of your identity.
So run them in containers. Or wrap them in scripts that do ini_set() with desired options.
Conceptually, ActivityPub actor identifiers aren’t really required to use HTTP. But do keep in mind that anything that relies on asymmetric crypto is too hard for the average user. People lose their login credentials all the time, and they are something they can memorize. Private keys would be a much bigger nuisance, and the fact that there’s no way to restore access to an account once a private key is lost doesn’t help.
Can’t DIDs just be generated and provided in the same account metadata that includes a pubkey and account uri?
The answer lies in utility. When will a DID become necessary to solve some problem? Seems to me they’re just another GUID. Can’t a hash of a pubkey serve the same purpose?
I might look more into them for web-of-trust based moderation but would consider other options for a GUID as well.
ActivityPub implementations still rely on DNS for recognizing other servers.
Nomadic identity is similar to decentralized identifier because it frees users from DNS-based identities.
You can clone your zot account to another server without losing friends.
Zot protocol uses HTTP but doesn’t have to use HTTP. It can use other transport protocols in theory.