We started Ubikom with a vision of decentralized private identity and secure communications, where you are in control of both your identity and the encryption keys. While you’ve been enjoying secure communication, we are now ready to deliver another key part - decentralized identity registry. As of now, we are running a mix of database-centered identity registry and private blockchain. Today, with crypto prices much lower than a year ago and Ethereum’s “merge” complete, we are ready to switch to Ethereum blockchain and accomplish the goal of delivering private decentralized identity to our users. We are finalizing testing on the new Ethereum testnet, Sepolia.
We are inviting all our users to switch their registration to Ethereum blockchain. This will require a small gas fee of about $1.5 to perform the name registration transactions (and ONLY Ethereum gas fees - we are not charging anything for interaction with our smart contract). You don’t waste your money - you receive something of value, which is your name registered on blockchain. Later, you can transfer name ownership to another account, if you so desire, or sell it for Ether. It’s like an NFT, but this one is actually useful. With the cost being so low, why not grab a few other names (consider some popular words). Maybe they will be worth something in the future, who knows?
So what to expect? Let’s go over some key milestones:
If you do nothing, your service will terminate around March 1st. If you want to continue using Ubikom, here’s what you can do:
This migration will complete the first stage of the service. But we are not going to stop there. Future enhancements will include decentralized storage of the encrypted messages, supporting multiple internet gateways, instant messenger and other services based on the decentralized user-owned identity.
Thank you for being our loyal users. We hope you are as excited about the future as we are.
Ubikom Founders
Leo (lgx@ubikom.cc)
Sasha (sasha@ubikom.cc)
A: An Ethereum smart contract maintains the registry of names, public keys, and endpoints where messages should be delivered. This registry is used every time a message is sent, to construct a shared encryption key and find out the address where the message will be delivered.
A: Yes. Our smart contract is public (see here). Once you register a name, it is associated with your address, and only you can perform operations on it (update the configuration, update the public key, transfer it to another owner or sell it).
A: You pay only the gas fees (i.e. you pay to miners to include this transaction into the next block). Our experiments showed that the one-time cost of adding your name to Ubikom’s smart contract on Ethereum can be as little as $1.5. Again, this is not the fee charged by Ubikom. If you are not in a rush, you can offer even less - but confirmation might take longer. Obviously, gas prices can and do change, and we have no way to predict future prices.
A: We are working on ways to get our loyal users migrated, even if they can’t afford the fees. Stay tuned.
A: Glad that you asked! No, only 95% of crypto is a scam. We believe the crypto foundations are solid, and this is one reason why we decided to use Ethereum - it’s the network second only to Bitcoin (and we can’t use Bitcoin since we need smart contract support). We also believe that the current crypto contraction is healthy in the long run - let’s get rid of hype and fraud, and keep building.
A: You need to do two things: get a crypto wallet (for example, Metamask), and fund your account. There are many ways to get the initial funds, which vary by country. Please consult your local user community. Beware: crypto message boards and Discord servers are inundated by scammers. If someone is contacting you out of the blue, it’s a scam, no matter what they say. Never share any passwords or recovery phrases with anyone. Consider using a hardware wallet - it’s more reliable and secure than a software one.