Account Identity
Polkadot provides a naming system that allows participants to add personal information to their on-chain account and subsequently ask for verification of this information by registrars.
Users must reserve funds in a bond to store their information on chain: and per each field beyond the legal name. These funds are locked, not spent - they are returned when the identity is cleared.
Judgements
After a user injects their information on chain, they can request judgement from a registrar. Users declare a maximum fee that they are willing to pay for judgement, and registrars whose fee is below that amount can provide a judgement.
When a registrar provides judgement, they can select up to six levels of confidence in their attestation:
- Unknown: The default value, no judgement made yet.
- Reasonable: The data appears reasonable, but no in-depth checks (e.g. formal KYC process) were performed (all the currently verified identities on-chain).
- Known Good: The registrar has certified that the information is correct (this step involves verification of state issued identity documents, and at the moment no account has known good identity, with the exception of registrars).
- Out of Date: The information used to be good, but is now out of date.
- Low Quality: The information is low quality or imprecise, but can be fixed with an update.
- Erroneous: The information is erroneous and may indicate malicious intent.
A seventh state, "fee paid", is for when a user has requested judgement and it is in progress. Information that is in this state or "erroneous" is "sticky" and cannot be modified; it can only be removed by the complete removal of the identity.
Registrars gain trust by performing proper due diligence and would presumably be replaced for issuing faulty judgments.
Registrars
Registrars can set a fee for their services and limit their attestation to certain fields. For example, a registrar could charge 1 DOT to verify one's legal name, email, and GPG key. When a user requests judgement, they will pay this fee to the registrar who provides the judgement on those claims. Users set a maximum fee they are willing to pay and only registrars below this amount would provide judgement.
There are multiple registrars on Polkadot. Unless no additional information is available here, you must reach out to specific registrars individually if you want to be judged by those.
From the 1st of April 2024 onwards, Registrar 0 will still exist on-chain but will not accept any new judgment requests. The registrar fee is set to a substantial amount to dissuade identity judgement requests. Identities judged by the registrar before that date will not be affected. For new identity judgment, please use the other registrars.
Registrar 0 :
URL: NA
Account:
12j3Cz8qskCGJxmSJpVL2z2t3Fpmw3KoBaBaRGPnuibFc7o8
Fee:
0 DOT
Registrar 1:
URL: https://registrar.d11d.net/
Account:
1Reg2TYv9rGfrQKpPREmrHRxrNsUDBQKzkYwP1UstD97wpJ
Fee:
20 DOT
Registrar 2:
Account:
1EpXirnoTimS1SWq52BeYx7sitsusXNGzMyGx8WPujPd1HB
Fee:
0 DOT
Registrar 3:
Account:
13SceNt2ELz3ti4rnQbY1snpYH4XE4fLFsW8ph9rpwJd6HFC
Fee:
0.5 DOT
Polkassembly (Registrar 3) provides setting on-chain ID as a service on their website.
See this page to learn how to become a Registrar.
Sub-Identities
Users can also link accounts by setting "sub accounts", each with its own identity, under a primary account. The system reserves a bond for each sub account. An example of how you might use this would be a validation company running multiple validators. A single entity, "My Staking Company", could register multiple sub accounts that represent the Stash accounts of each of their validators.
An account can have a maximum of 100 sub-accounts. Note that a deposit of is required for every sub-account.
If you are an advanced user, see the Polkadot-JS guides about account identity.