Polkassembly Application for Registrar

We propose to increase identity registration and make the process efficient by more than 75%. Easy UX, safer ecosystem!

Polkassembly is an integral part of Polkadot and Kusama governance. It is dedicated to fostering transparent governance and active participation within the Kusama and Polkadot ecosystems. The team is excited to announce its application to become a registrar.

On-chain identities in the Polkadot ecosystem are crucial for trust, accountability, and interoperability. By establishing unique digital fingerprints, participants can securely interact within the network. An on-chain identity fosters a reliable and verifiable framework for participants within the Polkadot ecosystem, which is governed by a defined set of rules. It enables seamless integration and collaboration between different projects and stakeholders.

It also builds accountability as the participants are vetted and there are multiple points of contact for an individual/team. Hence, when requesting funds or proposing changes, the network and its resources have an additional layer of protection via the verification process.

The goal of setting an on-chain identity is to enhance transparency, security, and the overall ease of interaction between the participants of the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems.

Problems in current on chain identity system

The current process for verifying the identity is extremely fragmented
The process requires a heavy reliance on navigating through PolkadotJS, which can be overwhelming to those who are new to the ecosystem
Twitter, Element and email verification is done manually and the process is very complicated for any user. The verification process also relies on availability of the registrar, creating further friction in the process.
The process is also broken away from the governance and proposal creation interface, which makes it difficult for a lot of the community as they need to adapt to multiple tools for serving different use cases

Objective for Registrar Application

The primary objective of creating the registrar application is to build an easy and integrated governance experience for all users within Polkassembly.
This involves building for automation of proposal creation, addition of education nudges on proposal evaluation, verification of on chain identities and comprehensive user level profiling with leaderboards and gamification for governance participants
Taking the onus for ensuring verification of users and building security for funds requested from treasury
All teams requesting funds should be able to create an onchain identity, verify themselves and use our product suite to create a multisig (via Polkasafe or any other publicly available multisig SDK) when requesting for funds
The time required for identity registration and verification will be reduced by more than 75%, enhancing the adoption of the feature and enabling a more robust and secure treasury management.

Efficiency improvement of 75% was deduced by using the average time difference between the two methods for 3 unique users

The time required by the earlier method was 20-25 mins, and via Polkassembly will be approximately 5 mins

Why is Polkassemby uniquely positioned for this application?

We believe that leveraging the right set of prompts and experiences, we can ensure teams are adopting the on chain identity feature set provided by the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems
Polkassembly has continuously been working on differentiating its experience for proposal creators, governance participants, and networks and the verification of on chain identities can be a critical step towards the success of this initiative
Polkassembly has also been developing an extended feature set which will allow for an end to end experience
Creation of opengov proposals directly via the platform, in a simple and user friendly way
Observing locked, available and transferable balances while ensuring an easy mechanism to unlock bonded tokens
A super powerful delegation ecosystem, where track level delegation is easy and helps build accountability for teams receiving delegations
Voting based on verification of credentials and track record of individuals and their contributions to the ecosystem

How will Polkassemby enable users to apply for on chain identity verification?

Attached below is a step wise explanation of how Polkassembly plans to receive and process on chain delegations

Step 1 -
Discovery on on chain identity setup
Users will be provided with contextual nudges on Polkassembly for setting up on chain identity

Step 2 -
Educating users on what is on chain identity and why is it important

Explaining the process of setting up and on chain identity and how verification works
Helping users understand how to identify users with a valid on chain identity
Clear communication on the total amount required (Please note the amount mentioned is representative and may vary based on market conditions)
The breakdown of the feed will also be provided

**Step 3 **-
Providing the user with an interface to share all their social and contact information

The user will be allowed to choose any one of their address which they want to verify
They can choose their legal and display name
They can identify their social handles for further communication with the community
They are informed about the bond, which is mandatory while setting up an on chain identity
They are also informed about the fees charged for setting up or changing the social handles, which will be the fee per handle * # of handles being verified

Step 4 -
Confirming the fees and initiating the step by step identity verification process

Each social handle will need to be independently verified after the input is provided
Once all verifications are completed the success states will be provided

Step 5 -
The team will complete verification for the provided credentials and share an update over email for the candidate.

The tentative process will be as follows -

Website liveness will be checked using https://helloacm.com/tools/can-visit/ or a similar tool.
Email verification would be a verification link based hence removing a lot of manual steps involved currently.
Element & Twitter verification will be done using their APIs, again automating the process and removing manual steps of using polkadot.js and DMing registrars for verification.
Once the data is verified, there will be an final approval from registrar for a few days
(This will be eliminated permanently, completely automating the process and making it permissionless)

Full Proposal here.