Set up an instance of IdentityLink server

[dysbulic]

Account links verify that a user controls an account on a particular site. The successor to 3Box's profiles is IdentityLink which is a set of serverless functions that do a challenge response to verify account ownership.

Users create a post within the software system being verified – a gist on GitHub, a tweet on Twitter, a post on Discorse, etc. – to prove that they have control of the account.

The 3Box maintainers said that they don't plan to run an accessible instance, and that if we want to do account links we should run one of our own.

We need the account links not only for putting links in the MyMeta profiles, but also for use with SourceCred in determining XP across systems.

The current set of serverless functions is configured to run on AWS and uses Redis to store the challenge. I would like to investigate if it is possible to run on Vercel and use Ceramic to store the challenges.

[dysbulic]

Apparently dns.xyz is going to be establishing a publicly accessible instance of IdentityLink, so we don't have to do one ourselves.

One thing I'm uncertain of is how it handles different Discord or Discourse servers. Whether the IdentityLink server is set to only verify one particular server or if it's possible to specify the server to verify against dynamically.

[dysbulic]

One thing I'm uncertain of is […] whether the IdentityLink server is set to only verify one particular server, or if it's possible to specify the server to verify against dynamically.

I checked the code, and the IdentityLink service receives the Discourse server to check for the user attestation as a request parameter, so if dns.xyz runs an accessible instance we should be able to use it…