Thanks for writing this up, Hank. First, let us point out that SimpleID is actively being developed. Just like any of us here can post all of the things that Blockstack is missing because Blockstack is actively being developed, the same is true of SimpleID.
That being said, what’s possible as of today with SimpleID mirrors everything possible with traditional Blockstack Auth. We’ve just pushed an update to give users control to take an ID registered on SimpleID and use it via the Blockstack Browser. That was always in the cards and it was a matter of exposing the function. So done.
We also intend to allow existing Blockstack IDs to be used on SimpleID-based apps. That’s a bit less of a priority, and in our eyes should not disqualify anyone using SimpleID from App Mining.
This particular issue strikes me more as one that should be communicated by developers as they see fit. SimpleID is intentionally un-opinionated. Blockstack Auth is very opinionated, so building an alternative that is also opinionated doesn’t make a ton of sense. It also puts a lot of centralization on the solution.
Now, let’s talk about roadmap, both immediate and long-term. As mentioned, we plan to allow existing Blockstack IDs to sign into SimpleID apps. All user data (which consists of non-revealing pointer files) will be replicated to IPFS to ensure that if SimpleID’s database and server go down, users can still log in. That’s a major goal of further decentralizing Blockstack, so this seems very much aligned with your goals.
Long-term, we plan to introduce user data replication. In addition to storage on the user’s selected Gaia Hub, developers using SimpleID will be able to offer user storage replication to IPFS. We also plan to support custom Gaia hubs as well as simple profile.json updates. These two features alone will significantly extend the capabilities of Blockstack and we think developers and users of apps built by these developers will benefit immensely.
I’m not sure what other information is necessary for you all to make a decision on this being something developers can use in app-mining-eleigible apps, but I do want to leave you with a post in which @muneeb himself confirmed that third-party auth built using Blockstack would be acceptable:
https://forum.blockstack.org/t/3rd-party-blockstack-app-auth/6983