Quadratic Identifiers
Quadratic Identifiers (Qu.Id) is a resolution protocol for persistent digital object identifiers.
Many web assets (web pages, pdf documents, images) are identified by a location (E.g. https://quadratic.systems, https://u.r.l/to/my/image.png, etc). If the location changes, the artifact can no longer be reached and its new location will require new discovery. If thousands or millions of assets have changed location, updating references to these assets could be impossible.
Digital object identifiers assign a unique handle to the asset. This allows systems to reference the identifier without having to track the target location of the asset. If the location changes, only the identifier's target requires updating. For example, if an image (https://u.r.l/to/my/image.png) is given the unique identifier 1234, all references to that image (perhaps in multiple web pages) can use the unique identifier 1234 to find the image. If the image's location is changed to https://new-location.ur.l/images/image.png, only the identifier requires updating and so anyone referencing that image is not required to update the url.
The current drawback of digital identification registrars such as DOI.org and Handle.net are that they are centralized, requiring reliance on a single authority to issue, maintain and resolve identifiers. Many registrars require yearly subscriptions, thus failing true persistence.
The Quadratic.Id platform provides true decentralized, reliable, persistent digital identifiers by using a combination of blockchain-based smart contracts and peer-to-peer databases share across a decentralized network. The registrant's location based asset is stored in an OrbitDB database and its resulting hash is stored to the Qu.Id Resolver smart contract. This ensures that the database can be replicated by anyone and the a smart contract can verify whether the database entry is legitimate or not.
Once stored in the database and ratified on the blockchain, a persistent identifier and its corresponding target is retrieved directly from the database. By rapidly synchronizing databases across many nodes, very fast lookup can be achieved.
By fully decentralizing the platform, the persistence of persistent identifiers is guaranteed by the architecture.
The Qu.Id Registrar
The Qaudratic Identification Registrar (Qu.Id Registrar) is a smart contract-driven registration process for Quadratic Identifiers. The process relies on the staking of Quadratic tokens to register a Quadratic Identifier and management, transferral and de-registration of identifiers is controlled entirely by the end-user. There is no need for a central authority to control the registration process.
End-users can register, view and de-register Quadratic Identifiers using a simple graphical user interface. Qu.Id Resolver Registration is available at https://registrar.quadratic.systems.