Stable identity
A VLAD remains stable while its keys and protected metadata rotate.
Common questions
FAQ
The Basics
- Is this a blockchain?
- No. There is no global ledger, no consensus, no tokens, and no mining. Each identity has its own small, signed, append-only log that only its followers care about. Trust comes from replaying that one log, not from a network-wide chain.
- Do I need to understand cryptography to use it?
- No. Point your tools at a VLAD and BetterSign keeps the keys current for you. The cryptography stays under the hood; day to day you deal with a stable name and the occasional signed update.
- What does VLAD stand for?
- Verifiable Long-lived Address — a permanent, self-certifying name: anyone can verify it, it does not change over time, and it points at you.
Trust & Security
- If there is no certificate authority, who am I trusting?
- The math, not a company. Anyone can replay a VLAD’s provenance log and check every change for themselves. The network (VLADemlia) only helps peers find each other — it never decides what is true.
- What if the network is down, or a peer lies to me?
- Records are content-addressed and verified locally, so a lying or malicious peer cannot forge anything — bad data simply fails verification. And if the network is unreachable, you can still verify any log you already hold; discovery needs the network, trust does not.
- What happens if I lose my key?
- BetterSign has a built-in recovery authority: a stronger, better-protected recovery key that outranks your everyday key and can authorize a rotation if the normal key is lost or compromised. It is set up when the identity is created.
- Is it post-quantum?
- Yes. Post-quantum signatures and key encapsulation are first-class, so identities and messages created today still verify and stay private after quantum computers arrive.
Adoption & Operations
- How far along is BetterSign — is it production-ready?
- Honestly: it is an early, actively developed system, not a turnkey product yet. The cryptographic core and provenance-log verification are implemented and tested, and integrations for SSH, TLS/SVID, WireGuard, and git signing work today. Evaluate it against your own risk tolerance — and because it interoperates with existing standards, you can pilot it on a single surface before committing.
- Do I have to replace my existing tools?
- No. BetterSign speaks X.509, SPIFFE/SVID, OpenSSH, and PGP, and ships a drop-in gpg replacement and a zero-trust mTLS proxy, so you can slide it under existing tools and adopt it one surface at a time.
- How does a rotated key actually reach everyone?
- They pull; you do not push. You publish the change once, and anyone following your VLAD looks it up, verifies it themselves, and switches to the new key automatically. Nothing is hand-delivered to individual machines.
How It Compares
- How is this different from Sigstore?
- Sigstore centers on keyless signing with short-lived certificates and a transparency log tied to an identity provider (OIDC). BetterSign gives you a long-lived, self-owned identity whose keys you rotate freely, verified by replaying its own log — with no dependence on an external identity provider being online.
- How is this different from PGP or Keybase?
- PGP ties your identity to a specific key, so rotating keys makes you look like a stranger, and its web of trust is famously hard to use. BetterSign separates identity from keys and replaces social-graph trust with a signed log anyone can verify. The comparison page lays it out side by side.
- How is this different from SPIFFE/SPIRE?
- SPIFFE and SPIRE issue workload identities from a central server and its database. BetterSign issues the same kinds of identities but roots trust in a provenance log instead of a server, so rotating a key — or even re-keying the authority — is a routine signed update. See the SPIFFE demo.
Trust Math you can check, not a CA
If keys are lost Built-in recovery authority
Maturity Early, actively developed; core implemented