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feat: edited identity protocol design document

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Leyla Becker 2026-02-20 21:07:23 -06:00
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posts/drafts/identity-protocol-design.md
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### The Captured Internet ### The Captured Internet
The internet as it exists today is structured to extract profit and enforce control at every layer. What began as a decentralized research network has been enclosed by capital and colonized by the state - transformed into infrastructure that serves accumulation and domination rather than human connection. Every part of the modern internet is structured to extract profit and enforce control. What began as a decentralized network ran nerds and enthusiasts has been enclosed by capital, colonized by the state and transformed into infrastructure that serves accumulation and domination rather than fostering human connection and improving your life.
The state and capital are not separate forces acting on the internet from outside. They are fused into a single apparatus of control. The state creates the legal frameworks that make digital enclosure possible - intellectual property, terms of service enforced by courts, surveillance mandates. Capital builds the infrastructure and extracts the rents. Each legitimizes and reinforces the other. This is not a corruption of some neutral technology; the internet as we know it is the internet as it was shaped by these interlocking powers. To be able to have control over your digital life you need to have some way of telling people "this is who I am and this is how you find me". Traditionally for users this has been phone numbers, and usernames. Within the realm of hosting a service for others to access it is IP addresses, and Domain names. All of these things have some form of artificial sacristy applied to them and in most cases some layer of ownership and property added to them.
The internet can be understood through the relationship between base and superstructure.[^base-superstructure] The material infrastructure - cables, routers, data centers, the physical means of digital production - forms the economic base. But this base does not exist in isolation. It is governed by a superstructure of laws, institutions, and ideologies: ICANN's authority over naming, the property regime that makes domain speculation possible, the surveillance mandates that compel ISPs to log traffic, the ideology of "neutral platforms" that obscures corporate power. The superstructure arises from and serves to legitimize the economic relations of the base. When we talk about IANA, ICANN, or Certificate Authorities, we are talking about superstructural institutions that manage and reproduce the capitalist organization of internet infrastructure.
Critically, this analysis suggests that changing the superstructure alone - new laws, new governance bodies, reformed institutions - cannot fundamentally transform the internet. The superstructure reflects the base. To build genuinely autonomous infrastructure requires building alternative material relations: networks owned by communities rather than corporations, protocols that do not require permission from state-sanctioned authorities, infrastructure organized around mutual aid rather than rent extraction. The protocol described here is an attempt to construct alternative base infrastructure - new material means of communication that do not reproduce capitalist relations of production.
**IP Address Allocation**
IP address space has been made artificially scarce and turned into a commodity. IANA sits atop a hierarchy that delegates to Regional Internet Registries, national registries, and ISPs - each layer extracting fees and imposing conditions. The exhaustion of IPv4 created a speculative market where addresses trade for millions of dollars. But IANA itself exists because states agreed it should - the allocation hierarchy is backed by international treaties and national laws. To participate on the internet with a publicly routable address, you must pay rent to this chain of institutions and submit to terms ultimately enforced by state violence. Your ability to be reachable is determined by your purchasing power and your compliance with authorities you never chose.
**DNS Name Allocation**
The Domain Name System is a rent extraction machine wrapped in state legitimacy. ICANN operates under a contract with the US Department of Commerce - its authority flows from a state that claims jurisdiction over global naming. Registries receive monopoly grants enforced by national courts. Domain names are treated as property because states define and protect property. Names can be seized by court order, transferred under legal threat, or revoked when you violate terms written by corporate lawyers and blessed by state power. The entire system presents itself as natural and necessary, but it is a constructed order serving particular interests - an abstraction demanding your obedience while offering nothing but the continuation of its own authority.
**HTTPS Certificates**
Transport security has been captured by a cartel of Certificate Authorities operating with implicit state blessing. Browsers and operating systems - themselves products of corporations subject to state regulation - decide which CAs to trust. States compel CAs to issue certificates for surveillance. The "security" this system provides is security for the existing order: it authenticates the property claims of domain holders and protects the surveillance apparatus from tampering. Your ability to establish connections that the system recognizes as "secure" depends on approval from gatekeepers who serve state and capital, not you.
### How State and Capital Prevent Autonomous Community ### How State and Capital Prevent Autonomous Community
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[^signal-x3dh]: Marlinspike, Moxie and Trevor Perrin. "The X3DH Key Agreement Protocol." Signal Foundation, November 2016. https://signal.org/docs/specifications/x3dh/. Revision 1, 2016-11-04. [^signal-x3dh]: Marlinspike, Moxie and Trevor Perrin. "The X3DH Key Agreement Protocol." Signal Foundation, November 2016. https://signal.org/docs/specifications/x3dh/. Revision 1, 2016-11-04.
[^kademlia]: Maymounkov, Petar and David Mazières. "Kademlia: A Peer-to-peer Information System Based on the XOR Metric." *Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems (IPTPS)*, 2002. https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~petar/papers/maymounkov-kademlia-lncs.pdf [^kademlia]: Maymounkov, Petar and David Mazi<EFBFBD>res. "Kademlia: A Peer-to-peer Information System Based on the XOR Metric." *Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems (IPTPS)*, 2002. https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~petar/papers/maymounkov-kademlia-lncs.pdf
[^mls]: Barnes, R., et al. "The Messaging Layer Security (MLS) Protocol." RFC 9420, IETF, July 2023. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9420/. See also: "Messaging Layer Security Architecture" RFC 9420. [^mls]: Barnes, R., et al. "The Messaging Layer Security (MLS) Protocol." RFC 9420, IETF, July 2023. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9420/. See also: "Messaging Layer Security Architecture" RFC 9420.