Powering Key Recovery with Lit Protocol

idOS, the identity layer of web3, is a decentralized storage and access management protocol for digital identity data, allowing individuals to own their personal data and use their wallets to share it across the internet in a privacy-preserving way. By doing so, we aim to open up DeFi to the real world by enabling everyday use cases that require identity verification and rely on decentralized, permissionless and more efficient web3 infrastructure. A vision we call OpenFi.

Empowering users to own and manage their data from their private, encrypted profile is a big step forward to ensure individuals can keep their self-sovereignty and privacy on the internet. However, self-custody also means increased responsibility. One of the primary concerns raised by our early users was the risk of losing access to their profile, and therefore their data. To address this, we have been looking to find a solution for users to recover access to their profile, without compromising security or privacy, and we found Lit to be the perfect match.

Thanks to Lit, idOS now offers key recovery directly within the User Dashboard. Users logged into their profile can:

1. Create a back-up of their password (which is needed to encrypt, decrypt and share data credentials).
2. Recover their password if forgotten, by simply signing a message from any of their connected wallets.

To be more specific, idOS is using Lit's SDK to allow users to create an encrypted backup of their idOS key, along with a list of arbitrary (but provable) conditions that must be met for  decryption. Should users lose their password, they can recover it securely using their verified wallet’s signature. See the diagram below for more details:

And check out a quick demo below:

Conclusion

Lit enables idOS users to own and manage their personal data in a self-custodial and privacy-preserving way, while ensuring they don’t lose access to it forever. Looking ahead, we envision  other possible use cases for Lit within our system and are looking forward to working together in the future. For instance, future developments could enable users to manage their data without interacting with a web3 wallet, unlocking even more real-world use cases beyond web3 for idOS. 

To find more about idOS, see below the following resources:

• Website: https://idos.network/ 
• Docs: https://docs.idos.network/ 
• Github: https://github.com/idos-network

Júlio Santos - Co-Founder & CTO

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