<p><strong>Identity?</strong></p> <blockquote> <ul> <li>You want to use some online service... you put your email and a password... that's stored in some database..</li> <li>Now every time you want to access the service you put in the same thing and you get access ..</li> <li>That email and password combination stored in a company's database is your <strong>identity</strong> for that service...</li> <li>That's the web2 world.. </li> </ul> </blockquote> <p><strong>Where is the Problem?</strong></p> <blockquote> <ul> <li>You don't own it...it's stored in some database </li> <li>It's centralized...if a company chooses to not allow you to use it you can't..</li> <li>There is no true logical association here...it's just a company storing the credentials and allows you to use the service if they want...(they may deny even if you have correct credentials..)</li> </ul> </blockquote> <p><strong>How cryptography solves this?</strong></p> <blockquote> <ul> <li>Here we don't put trust in some third party company but we put trust in code + math...</li> <li>We have two keys : One public, One private</li> <li>Public key can be shared any where we want</li> <li>Private key is our source of identity...we keep it secret</li> <li>someone with private key can sign the content of a message and it can be verified with it's corresponding public key</li> <li>The whole trust lies in the maths and code...</li> <li>It's a permission-less system..</li> </ul> </blockquote>