BetterSign™

We solved passwords.

Provenance-based identity replaces shared secrets.

No passwords to forget, phish, reset, or leak. Your identity is a permanent name made of math — not a secret you have to guard.

Authentication is a detached signature over a fresh challenge, verified against your provenance log. There is no password database and no bearer credential to exfiltrate.

There's no secret for anyone to steal
Nothing to reset and nothing to forget
The same you, trusted everywhere you go

Challenge-response signed by your current key
Verifier resolves your VLAD to the plog head via the DHT
Key compromise is contained by rotation, not account takeover

Get BetterSign Read the spec

The picture

A wax seal only you can stamp

Picture a signet ring — your private key — that stamps a mark no one else can reproduce. Everyone has a picture of your stamp — your public key — so they recognize your mark, yet still can't make it themselves. Change one word of the letter and the stamp no longer matches.

Signing produces a detached signature over the entry bytes; verification checks it against the advertised public key. Any change to the signed content invalidates the proof — tampering is self-evident.

What it fixes

Shared secrets vs. keys

Passwords, PINs, passphrases

✕You have to hand the secret over to use it
✕The same secret often gets reused in many places
✕Can be guessed, phished, or stolen in a breach
✕Only as safe as the weakest site that stored it
✕A leaked one is instantly useful to a thief

Keys

✓The secret never leaves your device
✓A different key for every identity and purpose
✓Nothing to phish, because you never send the secret
✓You prove yourself without revealing anything
✓Rotating to a fresh key retires the old risk

How it works

How a VLAD works

You create an identity, which gives you a VLAD — your permanent name

BetterSign starts a signed logbook for it

Every key change adds a new signed page to the logbook

Anyone can replay the logbook and check every page is legitimate

They always end up with your current, correct keys — without asking anyone

The building blocks

Four ideas do all the work

◇

Stable identity

A VLAD remains stable while its keys and protected metadata rotate.

⛓

Self-verifying history

Every state transition is hash-linked and authorized by the previous log state.

⇋

Decentralized discovery

VLADemlia helps peers locate current records without becoming the trust root.

↻

Routine rotation

Key changes become signed updates that followers can verify and apply.

The jargon, translated

Plain-English words for the deep stuff

VLAD: your permanent name; short for Verifiable Long-lived Address

plog: the signed logbook behind a VLAD that records every change

rotation: swapping an old key for a fresh one without changing your identity

revocation: marking a key as no longer usable, for example after it leaks

recovery: using a stronger backup key to fix things if a normal key is lost

VLADemlia: the network address book that helps peers find each other; it never decides who to trust

Questions

The things people ask first

Do I need to understand the cryptography?

No. Point your tools at a VLAD and BetterSign keeps the keys current for you — SSH that doesn't break when keys rotate, TLS that renews itself, API tokens you can rotate freely.

What if I lose my key?

Recovery is built in. A stronger, better-protected backup key can fix things if a normal key is lost or stolen — no out-of-band scramble.

Why is changing keys a good thing?

The longer a single key stays in use, the more chances a copy ends up somewhere it shouldn't. Rotating retires old risk — like changing the locks now and then.

Can a company take my identity away?

No. A VLAD is owned by you and no one else, proven by math anyone can check, and still verifiable years later — even offline.