Can anyone help me understand how to think about Blockstack in relation to uPort? These seem to be competing identity platforms, each hoping to become the dominant system. These are effectively not compatible, right?
Any thoughts, insight, or recommended reading/watching is appreciated!
If I recall correctly, uPort is just an identity wallet. Blocktack includes an identity wallet, plus a SSO system for Blockstack dapps to use it, plus a reliable and performant decentralized storage system (Gaia) for hosting your dapp data. Also, Blockstack supports off-chain names, where the user can use a subdomain registrar to get names like jude.personal.id or danrxn.stealthy.id without having to acquire Bitcoin. These names are just as secure as on-chain names, but are a lot less expensive to make and maintain (they are updated in batches) and can be used instantly once they are queued for registration. Last I checked, uPort does not have either of these things.
Compatibility - It appears that uport.me is aligned solely with the ethereum network, so we would posit that it is not compatible with Bstack at this time (but you have to think about the protocol being developed for DIDs and how the two may be able to cross lines at some point, so to speak (from uport: “uPort’s open identity system allows users to register their own identity on Ethereum, send and request credentials, sign transactions, and securely manage keys & data.”). We have not looked to deeply into uport.me but will at some point… Hope that helps.