New Blog Post: Serverless Sign in With Blockstack Auth

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How does “quick login” actually work? Is it using my existing blockstack account?

I tried to login by downloading blockstack but every distribution just said “coming soon”. Maybe don’t provide that link if there’s no way to get it?

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Thanks for trying this out @neha!

With the “Quick Sign In” button, a throwaway key is generated on the fly and used to sign an auth response. It’s just meant to demo the sign in process and isn’t tied to long term account access. You’ll still be able to access your Forum account via username and password.

And you can actually download the developer release here: https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack-portal/releases. Thanks for the feedback, we’ll take a look at this page and see how we can improve it.

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there is some type of issue when trying to click the with blockstack option when logging in in Safari 10.1, I get a safari can’t open this address error

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There is a link to “View the Developer Releases” on the download page. We’re still testing out our macOS and Linux builds but developers can get them from Github. And, yes, thanks for the feedback! This release was meant for developers and our thinking is that they’d be able to get the latest version for Github – we can improve the navigation and flow.

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I was curious to try this too and I downloaded the blockstack portal on my Windows box (thought I’d give it a try there!)
I have the blockstack core API up and running and have validated it via the http://localhost:6270/v1/names/blockstack.id link.
I have managed to get the ‘npm run web’ working for the portal (had to change a few paths and a few spawn() calls to work properly on windows) and I see a bunch of stuff in the build directory, including the index.html. However, when I bring up the index.html, it just sits there - seeming to do nothing.
I am running the CORS proxy (npm run dev-proxy), don’t know if I need to or not.
Not sure what to do next - am I trying to run the portal correctly? Is there something else I should try?

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I can log in with id + p/w to this account.
I can log in with github giving permision to this account.
I can log only in with blockstack if I create a new account using the anlysis.id id which is me.
(I didn’t do this because there seems no point.)
What I would want is.

  1. to use anlysis.id as github.
  2. a more interesting use case – login with anlysis.id but at some later point be able to merge one identity into the other.
    This would be a step towards something that I really want which is, not a forum functionality but some control of a dynamic series of ACLs whereby:-
    I have an anonymous id where I know who I am, I know who you are, but you do not know who I am, but, so long as I allow this, you can link me to a series of exchanges.
    I can choose with whom I link and exchange.
    I can increase or decrease access to assets I own.
    I can become a “known” id, by which I just mean a named (perhaps verifiably named) person.
    I keep a record of the history of this.
    I’m sure this is what is being worked towards, but not there yet?
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Another thought:-
Yes, this is serverless sign in.
But it is still complex.
I wonder what can be done to simplify all of this.
Must the user be responsible for all the different actions that are entailed in creating an ID, at the moment?
In particular acquiring bitcoins or really any talk of transaction fees.
Is there a way of proxying such activity without introducing a centralised model, that is some steps are delegated to the proxy then control is returned to the user. Even an anonymous user?
Another point is that things go funny, e.g. assets don’t load when expected as there is a lag, this could matter in many applications.

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Coming back to this-is-user-moc there are further things I need to check.
The OSX .dmg works but the version of dev I have won’t allow me past the recover account overlay.