NIP-163 (draft): Identicon Sentinel, for easily spotting spoofs

[arcbtc]

For adding an easily recognizable identicon sentinel made from a hash of an npub.

Spoofing accounts is easy using the same profile pic, banner and closely related nip05, but having a little visual reference made from an npub would make the spoofs easier to spot.

Whatever identicon library is used, all clients should use the same library, minidenticons is an excellent choice, they are easy to identify even if smaller on the client.

[staab]

This has been tried lots of times on various clients (at least for default profile pictures or relay color codes), and I don't think it works very well. I also don't think it needs to be interoperable, although I could see a case for that if we didn't have NIP 05 and had to just compare pubkeys. WoT is much better for identifying impersonators. Not to say this is bad, but I don't think it's necessary.

[arcbtc]

You can make a closely related nip05, so should be used for everyone regardless of whether they have nip05 set.

In twitter I have spoofs dm'ing people constantly, whereas nostr folks are more astute, as the world turns to nostr this seems like low hanging fruit for battling spoofs.

Although not a conscious effort to compare identicons, Ben messaging you with trading tips having a red blob as opposed to a green blob would stand out.

I also think it should certainly be a standard across clients.

[arcbtc]

This has been tried lots of times on various clients

I would argue this justifies it being a standard, clearly there is demand, great minds...

[staab]

I would argue this justifies it being a standard, clearly there is demand

Yes, and github does it etc. But I've never once identified someone by their identicon, unless it's because they use an identicon while everyone else uses regular profile pictures. Maybe it's just how my brain works. But normally profile pictures vary greatly in style, composition, brightness, saturation, color, etc. If there were an identicon library that selected from 100+ different styles (this guy's a robot, that guy's a space invader, etc), that would have a chance of working with human pattern matching. But even then, I don't know if I would add this to coracle for aesthetic reasons.

[vitorpamplona]

I think private petnames are much more effective than this. @vicariousdrama has been using #761 to do that.

We just need to encourage users to change or add to a user's name.