A 2FA business authentication method using Bitcoin and Nostr, two decentralized protocols that are 💯 verifiable by anyone anywhere at any time.
This public business ID does not rely on governments, banks or any third party for legitimacy.
One of our biggest challenges at the moment is digital identity and wondering who to trust. Who is legitimate and who is a bot or clone of a legitimate business? This is a big problem on the internet overall.
All current methods of ID require use of government or some other third party that may not be readily available to everyone globally. #Bitcoin and #Nostr are both global protocols that cannot be controlled, shut down, or manipulated allowing for a permanent, static ID for businesses.
This method requires a Nostr profile npub and an on-chain inscription of your business. If you have a logo, I would suggest a JPEG inscription including your business info.
Let’s start with the Nostr profile. Create a profile on Nostr with a npub and a nsec using any client you prefer. KEEP YOUR NSEC SECRET! You can use an extension like @getAlby for more security. This is how you control your profile. The npub will be what you share publicly.
Set up your Nostr profile for your business including pertinent information such as business name, phone, email, website, address, etc. whatever you need to run your business. Add your logo as your pfp. I used @primal_app
The next part involves a #Bitcoin on-chain inscription. Since it is a jpeg, I believe it is called an ordinal inscription, but that isn’t important. This inscription will essentially be a detailed business card for your business.
Based on my findings, ordinals require specific wallet types to retain the inscription. Here is a guide to jpeg inscriptions. https://www.nervos.org/knowledge-base/guide_to_inscriptions
You will need a taproot enabled wallet. I used a seedsigner with taproot enabled.
I used @Ordinalbot to mint my ID document. It cost around $180 or 280,000 sats which seems a bit pricy, but government business registration & licensing isn’t free either. My JPEG was 59kb in size. I used 14pt font and it is still readable.
In the inscription, you must include the same info in your Nostr profile and your npub. You will also need to include a wallet address that you plan to use for your business. KEEP YOUR INSCRIPTION WALLET AND BUSINESS WALLET SEPERATE. You should have two different wallets.
Your business can use different wallet addresses for actual payments for services if you still wish to maintain some level of privacy; I would expect your wallet software to give you a new address for each tx anyway. Make sure you are providing the address to your client from your Nostr verifiable info to avoid confusion.
The wallet containing your inscription will be a wallet specifically for your inscription. DO NOT use it to pay for things or accept new txs unless you are skilled in coin control. You can freeze the UTXO on @SparrowWallet
Once your inscription has all the correct info (check if correct more than once) you can mint it to the chain. Now you have a block #, tx id, and an inscription on the blockchain that can be viewed by anyone anywhere at any time.
To view yours and other inscriptions, you will need to run a fully synced node with an ordinal explorer app. @Umbrel has this available. Or you can use https://www.ord.io
Going back to your Nostr profile, you can add the tx id, your business wallet address, and block # of your inscription and the inscription itself (jpeg). Both your npub and inscription now exist immutably on two seperate decentralized protocols without use of a third party.
Any question of your Nostr profile can be verified by your inscription and your inscription can be verified by your Nostr profile. Any clones/bots will have a different npub which can be verified by your inscription as it won’t match.
Maybe your business info changes over time and that is okay. You can post any updates to your Nostr profile. Even if you change everything about your business, your npub will remain the same and can still be verified by your inscription.
Besides being able to verify your business identity, other Bitcoin users will be able to audit your business based on the wallet address you provided. This will keep businesses honest and will allow others to know its current value in bitcoin at a glance. Customers will also have a trusted address to pay to if there is a question.
If you’re worried inscription space will run out, there are 2.1 quadrillion satoshis and you only need one to hold an inscription. ~70M have already been inscribed on. If all 8 billion people claimed 3 businesses, that would only be 24B inscriptions, ~0.0011% of total satoshis.
As a service business owner, it is important to be identified for my clients as I will need to be allowed into their home to work on their pianos. It’s also just good to know you’re not talking to a scammer posing as some other business.
Convincing businesses of all sizes to do this will be interesting. I think the tech will be the biggest hurdle. This is all optional like using #Bitcoin or #Nostr is optional.
