# Lessons from 10 Years of the Ethereum Identity Stack | Brantly Millegan (ETHID) at ETHConf

- Channel: [ETHGlobal](https://streameth.org/ethglobal)
- Date: 2026-07-09
- Duration: 13:45
- Topics: ETHID, Brantly Millegan, ETHConf, Ethereum identity, identity stack, ENS, Ethereum Name Service, public key cryptography, cypherpunks, Phil Zimmerman, PGP, wallets, private keys, Bitcoin, Namecoin, Vitalik, Sign in with Ethereum, EIP-4361, single sign on, Ethereum Follow Protocol, social graph, Ethereum Identity Kit, decentralized identity, open standards, DNS, crypto payments, decentralized websites, username, onchain profile, MetaMask, XMTP, self custody, Web3, authentication, Lindy, React
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-fk5RMs6zGnQ
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk5RMs6zGnQ

## Description

In this talk, Brantly Millegan from ETHID shares lessons from 10 years working on the Ethereum identity stack. He opens with his own onchain profile and ENS name, brantly.eth, encouraging everyone to get a name at ens.domains. He traces the story back 50 years to the 1970s invention of public key cryptography, which for the first time let people encrypt messages without exchanging a secret key ahead of time. The US government classified it as too powerful, until Phil Zimmerman and the cypherpunks successfully lobbied in the 1990s to make it legal for public use, enabling e-commerce and HTTPS. The cypherpunks saw public key cryptography as the basis for digital identity, but consumer versions like PGP never broke out because appeals to privacy and liberty alone do not motivate enough people without financial incentive.

Brantly explains that Bitcoin (2008) and Ethereum (2015) changed this by using public key cryptography for wallets, accomplishing through economic incentives what cypherpunks could not through appeals to values: the widespread adoption of private keys and a flourishing wallet industry. Vitalik named identity as a use case in the 2014 Ethereum white paper, but many early identity projects failed because they treated identity as a single app when it is really 20 hard problems at once, and because building in a decentralized way is far harder than centralized. The breakthrough was Ethereum Name Service, which started in 2016 and launched in 2017 modeled after DNS for decentralized websites, then crypto payments. In 2021, while on the team, Brantly realized ENS was accidentally your crypto username and profile, the meta use case underlying all the others. He credits ENS's success to not competing directly with DNS, great engineering, and long time horizons, making it extremely Lindy after nine plus years. He covers Sign in with Ethereum (EIP-4361) as a decentralized user-controlled single sign on, the Ethereum Follow Protocol as an onchain social graph, and Ethereum Identity Kit as a React component library. He closes with his core thesis: Ethereum identity is not a single app but the sum of information and relationships across decentralized protocols and open standards, unbundled into smallest viable parts so each can stand, fall, improve, or be replaced independently, making the whole stack more resilient.

00:00 Introduction
00:35 Brantly's Onchain Profile and ENS Name
00:47 Going Back 50 Years to Public Key Cryptography
01:09 What Public Key Cryptography Is
01:38 Why the US Government Classified It
01:52 The Cypherpunks Make It Legal in the 1990s
02:07 Why It Powers E-Commerce and HTTPS
02:28 Cryptography as the Basis for Digital Identity
02:48 Why PGP Never Broke Out
03:14 Bitcoin, Namecoin, and Early Naming
03:33 Identity in the 2014 Ethereum White Paper
04:06 How Crypto Spread Private Keys at Scale
04:38 Why Wallets Keep Getting Better
05:12 Why Early Identity Projects Failed
05:37 Why Decentralized Is Harder Than Centralized
06:12 The Ethereum Name Service Breakthrough
06:30 Realizing ENS Was a Username and Profile
06:59 Why the Username Is the Meta Use Case
07:15 Why ENS Has Succeeded Where Others Failed
07:39 Not Competing Directly With DNS
08:04 Great Engineering and Long Time Horizons
08:36 Why ENS Is Extremely Lindy
08:58 Accidentally Solving Single Sign On
09:26 The Vision of a Decentralized Account for the Internet
09:44 Sign in with Ethereum and EIP-4361
10:07 The Ethereum Follow Protocol Social Graph
10:36 Other Parts of the Identity Stack
10:58 Ethereum Identity Kit for Developers
11:18 What Ethereum Identity Really Is
11:39 Why the Stack Is Decentralized, Not Vertically Integrated
11:58 Why Each Part Can Stand or Fall on Its Own
12:17 Why This Makes the Stack Resilient
12:40 Why We Should Not Take This for Granted
13:06 The Hard Work Behind the Stack Today
13:25 Closing

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