Add the ability to attach key/value pairs to an account about stellar-protocol

[jedmccaleb]

possible implementation: stellar/stellar-core#997
12 character strings as keys
64 bytes as values

[MonsieurNicolas]

What are the actual use cases for this? Until now we had a strict schema for the user (like homeDomain)

[jedmccaleb]

It could be used for:
associating an encryption key with an account (this is the main thing we need it for now since this is a building block of the kyc stuff and private transactions)
associating other meta data, like name, other ways to contact, etc.
homeDomain could probably be this instead
Making a decentralized keybase.

Also I think there will be a lot of unanticipated things that will be able to use this. It seems like a pretty useful extension point.

[MonsieurNicolas]

Right, I understand it's generic, which quickly turns into garbage-in garbage-out type of situation as it's completely unstructured with no namespace.
I thought that even for kyc there was a need for external stores that deal with identity for example.

[jedmccaleb]

Well there will be agreement outside the protocol at the application layer about what the keynames mean. Similar to how assets work.

[elliots]

I don't want to just say +1, but that's basically the gist of this comment. This would be useful.

As a compromise between strict schema and garbage, perhaps a namespace field? Still not an actual schema, but would allow (through convention... domain?) for companies to namespace their fields and avoid clashes ('verificationCode' etc).

[sunny-g]

In addition 👍 this proposal, in addition to this repo for outlining new proposals, is there a publicly-available roadmap or priority list for when these proposals will be implemented?

Also, might this be a better use for IPFS storage for longer values as opposed to a dedicated protocol change like #32?

[jedmccaleb]

@sunny-g In this repo we discuss them but just because we are talking about them here doesn't mean that they will get implemented. If the idea is good and makes sense to include we will make an issue in stellar-core or the appropriate repo.

You could certainly use these key value pairs to include links to IPFS storage but it would be linked to a particular account. #32 is for attaching to transactions.

[sunny-g]

@jedmccaleb thanks for the prompt response and especially for your patience, I understand the differences now and hope #997 makes it into core soon!

[MikeFair]

Isn't this in?
Or is there something about this proposal that's different than the "Manage Data" txn API?

[jedmccaleb]

yes this is now in