Announcing the launch of Login with Unstoppable (Beta) for Developers

A Broken Internet 

Today, the average internet user has about 100 username and password combinations spread across dozens of apps. You may have one for email, another for Twitter, a third for your favorite online retailer, and that’s not even counting how many you have for any health, banking, and entertainment related services. Many companies have attempted to solve the problem of remembering passwords, whether through single sign-on services or through password managers, but none have perfected a solution. Without any ideal alternatives, we hesitantly hand over our private information to centralized servers that are vulnerable to attacks, human error, and much more. By doing so, we’ve lost control over what’s rightfully ours.  

How Did We Get Here? 

The internet wasn’t built with authentication in mind. But as dozens, then thousands, then millions of different services moved online, each had to establish authentication systems for their users.  As companies began to collect data and establish one-to-one relationships, many quickly realized that they could profit off of our data. Suddenly walled gardens were created and we were incentivized to give over our time or data in exchange for free services and immediate access. The end result is an internet controlled by a handful of companies. Private user information is now a commodity that is collected, stored, and monetized by large entities, with little transparency or accountability to the public. It doesn’t have to be this way - especially now with web3. 

A Better Way Forward: Putting Users in Control

We should have ownership of not only our identity and data, but also full control of who has access to it and how it’s used and monetized. This has been our mission at Unstoppable Domains since day one and today, we’re excited to introduce the Login with Unstoppable beta as the next big step in making that mission a reality. 

Login with Unstoppable is a domain-based login widget that uses a domain to authenticate a user and share their contact information (email addresses to start) with an app.

Imagine having one username for all of your accounts! No more creating multiple user accounts and remembering various passwords. Just remember your domain name. Better yet, your domain and data will be portable across all apps, both traditional on web2 and decentralized on web3, and can be moved between any of your wallets.

Beta Launch Details

For this beta launch, Login with Unstoppable will: 

(1) authenticate users, and

(2) allow users to grant email access to the apps that they choose

By allowing users to easily sign in with an Unstoppable Domain, everyone can have a consistent portable name across all their apps. This makes for a much simpler onboarding experience as users don’t need to enter or upload any additional information, which significantly reduces the barriers to entry for new apps and encourages greater competition for the best user experience. Win win for all!

How Does It Work?

1. When a user visits an app and logs in with their domain, the app reads the domain and directs the user to the authorization server saved to that domain name. 
2. The user then authenticates and grants access to the information requested by signing a transaction with the key that owns their domain. 
3. The app receives an access token and an id token from the authorization server with the user’s contact information (e.g., email address). 

4. The app and user now have an open communication channel! 


How Is This Different From Other Logins?

1. This login system is based on domain names! By using domains as your global login identifier across the internet you have a single name that you can use to log in across every app. Every app can then reference this domain to pull the info you’d like to share - like your domain name or favorite NFT profile picture - to show in their app. As an added bonus, they’re super easy to remember.
2. Because the login is tied to a domain and not a particular private public key pair, you can move it around as it’s not tied to a single wallet. This is useful if you want to rotate your keys or transfer the domain with your attached reputation to another wallet.  
3. Data is stored on users’ personal servers. To start, Unstoppable will run the first servers, but the goal is to have every user running their own server. Think running a Raspberry Pi or renting a personal server on Amazon or a decentralized protocol. Just like how everyone now owns a mobile phone, we think one day, we’ll all have our own server, ultimately giving us full ownership and control of our data.

Future Roadmap: Where’s It Going? 

Although we’re only starting with email sharing, we see a world of endless possibilities around creating a universal username. To name a few examples:

• Portable reputation: enabling you to bring your business’ reviews or profiles’ followers to various platforms
• Simpler signup processes: a one-click proof of humanity solution
• Better privacy and control: open source tools to easily run your own server and keep your data private
• Faster checkout: ability to pre-fill your fiat & crypto payment info as well as shipping info
• and much more to come!
  

Grow Your App with Unstoppable Domains

Starting today, apps will be able to join our beta program to integrate this new feature with only a few lines of code to establish a direct communication channel between themselves and their users. 

So what are you waiting for? Connect with us on Discord to start the integration process.