Hive Authentication Services - Update

It has now been two months since the Hive Authentication Services was officially put into production successfully. Apart from a very small hiccup in the first hours, there were no major problems and the services are now running at their cruising speed.

A lot of work has been provided during these two months to fix small bugs here and there, improve the HAS protocol, assist developers in integrating HiveAuth into their applications and coordinate with Keychain developers.

With the help of @louis88, I also created the HiveAuth website to provide all information related to HiveAuth, keeping in mind people who are not used to the Hive ecosystem.

Applications supporting HiveAuth

Several tools and applications have now added HiveAuth as a means of authenticating and signing transactions.

Private Key Storage Applications

• Keychain Mobile
  Of course, one of the key applications is Hive Keychain for Mobile which has supported HiveAuth from the very beginning. Kudos to @stoodkev and his team. They have been very reactive to improving and fixing small bugs after the HiveAuth launch. Feel free to support their new proposal!

• PKSA as a service
  For the more paranoid among us who don't trust a third party to store their private keys, I have provided and open source code example on how to run your own PKSA on a server. Although this can sometimes be less convenient than using Keychain, it allows you to have full control over your keys and the applications and operations you authorize. It can also be useful for debugging your applications if you are a developer.

Front-ends

• Peakd.com
  Thanks to the incredible work provided by @asgarth, Peakd.com with HiveAuth integration was available from day one. I use it every day, especially on my mobile, and I can say that it works like a charm and has changed my life. I no longer have to access my private keys and input them into the application. What a relief!

• Hive.blog
  @quochuy was also very quick to integrate HiveAuth into hive.blog (the social part). He had a lot of problems getting it to work on iOS, but it was quickly fixed and allowed us to improve the HAS protocol. It has now completed the integration into wallet.hive.blog (the wallet part) which should be available soon.

• Engage
  Engage is a conversation and community management application that I provide for free to the Hive community. it helps you to manage your incoming flow of posts and comments with a dedicated, non-distracting interface. It is with this application that I tested the HAS protocol intensively and of course it was one of the first interfaces officially available with HiveAuth support.

• d.Buzz
  Last but not least, d.Buzz has released a new version of their app with HiveAuth support.

Many other applications are being adapted or have shown interest in this new technology. I also contacted several apps developers to help them to integrate HiveAuth into their applications.

• dlux.io
  @disregardfiat is working on HiveAuth integration for his own applications on dlux.io and for the Speak Network.

• Splinterlands
  Although they have expressed an interest in integrating HiveAuth into their application and have received all the necessary information to do so, I have not received any feedback from them since. I pinged them again as it would also be a nice addition to their app and our ecosystem.

• Leofinance
  I had contact with @khaleelkazi several months ago to offer them to integrate HiveAuth into the many front-ends managed by the @leofinance team. At that time, they were very busy with the launch of their mobile applications. I often use some of their applications and miss HiveAuth login, so I pinged Khal once more hoping this can happen.

• Ecency
  Several users contacted me to find out if Ecency would support HiveAuth, especially for the website version. Despite several requests on this subject addressed to @good-karma, I still have no response from him. Although Ecency has a mobile version, I would like to see such a feature added considering that Ecency is the second most used app for posting on the blockchain and that I like to play with it from time to time.

PS: Did I miss any app supporting HiveAuth in the list. Feel free to comment and I will update the post.

Developers tools

• HiveAuth documentation
  The official HiveAuth documentation is available here and has been regularly updated, including by adding new material for developers and people who want to find visuals related to the project.

• HiveAuth Wrapper library
  To simplify the task of developers, I created an open-source Javascript library that makes it easy to integrate HiveAuth support into an application. It relieves developers from managing a WebSocket connection and the events it generates. It allows you to use HiveAuth in the same way as you would with a traditional API. More information in this post and on github.

• HiveAuth Client library
  @quochuy created his own library based on the above HiveAuth Wrapper Library but taking an event-based approach. More information about it here and on GitHub

• Hive Authentication Client
  @mintrawa also created a Javascript library working with both HiveAuth and the Keychain Extension. Read more about it in this post and on github

HiveAuth statistics

You probably already know, I'm a big fan of statistics!

Unfortunately, in the case of the HiveAuth project, I sabotaged myself. As I explained on the CryptoManiacs podcast with @taskmaster4450 and @jongolson, for obvious security and privacy reasons, I did ensure that as much of the data that passes through the Hive Authentication Services gateways is encrypted and therefore unusable by the operators of these servers. All a HiveAuth host can see are the account names and the HiveAuth protocol message type.

Although some suggested adding plaintext metadata to the protocol to be able to break down the traffic per app, that's something I declined. Privacy is important to me and I don't want anyone (including me) to track or be tracked for what they are doing, as most web 2.0 players do. This has been (and still is) a key selling point for HiveAuth.

Therefore, I do not have much information to provide you on this subject apart from the following:

As you can see, every day around 150 users rely on HiveAuth to authenticate. In all, no less than 3775 accounts have already used HiveAuth as an authentication method since the launch of the service.

Regarding the operations carried out, you can see that half a thousand operations are signed and published on the blockchain every day and that the number of authentications carried out has almost doubled in recent days.

This is most likely due to the arrival of new applications that have integrated HiveAuth and to the tests carried out by the developers who are currently working on this integration.

These usage statistics may seem low to you, but it has their good sides. The technology is relatively young and it is better to grow gently rather than to see a massive adoption followed by a loss of confidence because of the problems encountered in its infancy.

What is certain is that according to the feedback I regularly receive, those who use it are delighted and convinced of the security benefits of this authentication method, especially mobile users.

What's next?

The work is not yet finished.

HiveAuth has now demonstrated its stability and reliability. But to see the above numbers grow, we now need to promote the integration of HiveAuth into more applications to accelerate its adoption.

The goal is no less than revolutionize the way users authenticate on their applications by providing a keyless and passwordless solution (at least at the User Interface level).

For this to happen, we need to get out of the (currently) small world of Hive and convince as many developers and users of other applications as possible.

That's why I am currently working with a digital marketing agency to think about the best way to promote HiveAuth inside but also outside the Hive ecosystem.

I will come back to you with the result of our cogitation!

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Support the HAS project
Vote for the proposal on PeakD Vote for the proposal on Ecency vote for the proposal on Hive.blog Vote for the proposal using HiveSigner

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