The year is 2030. Facebook and Alphabet have been continuously hit with fines for privacy abuse. Slowly but surely, users have learned about how and why they should protect their data. Over the past ten years, they have been migrating to new means of data ownership - instead of creating another new profile upon each new app sign-up, their profiles are stored on IPFS and linked to a pair of asymmetric keys. Users’ profiles belong to themselves, and no one else.

Rewind in time, it’s January, 2019. We’re Autark - a small group of individuals who care about the possibilities of self-sovereign identity. It was the basis of our Rich User Profiles initiative in AGP-19 - a new type of application-interoperable profile that belongs to the user instead of the application.

And it’s finally time to show you the result. Profiles in Aragon are built using 3Box, meaning the basis of your Aragon identity is your Ethereum address, and all of your data is stored on IPFS. Any other application that’s built using 3Box and that YOU give permission to, will be able to display, add, and edit your information. Go ahead, see for yourself...

Using our experimental implementation of the Aragon client, you can test drive this upcoming feature by creating your profile...

Additionally, click an avatar to check out profiles of those who built or designed profiles!

Background

John Light, from Aragon One, suggested an integration with 3box.io instead of building a profile solution from scratch. After reaching community consensus on this approach, Jonathan Schwartz from Open Work Labs led our research and development efforts integrating 3Box Profiles for Aragon.

As with any application that uses 3Box for profiles, you can include an Avatar, Cover Photo, Name, Bio, Website, and Location. In addition, your profile in Aragon can also have a Work History and Education. These additions align with our strategy of making Aragon the platform to power workplaces of the future.

Product Notes

This product is presented on an experimental version of the Aragon client. Expect changes in the final version, as we are expecting a more thorough review from Aragon One in the coming months.

Once the feature is live on the official client at aragon.org, the profile you create now will still be there – distributed storage, woo! So create your profile now, and boldly share the link with others.

We're aware that it can take an unnecessarily long time to "unlock your 3box" at times and we are investigating (distributed storage, boo!). If you encounter this, try refreshing. If you find any other bugs, log them here.

While you can create your profile within Aragon in our experimental client, it is not integrated with any apps yet, hence does not provide that much immediate utility. We wanted to show you what's upcoming, so you see where Aragon is headed and what we are building.

We are planning to complete the integration in the next two months, assuming we are awarded our next tranche of funding with AGP-73. If you are an ANT holder, vote yes on AGP-73 right now if you want 3Box profiles in Aragon this year!