The case for the mask
Serious people have always used pseudonyms to speak freely. We built the infrastructure that tradition always deserved.
The oldest privacy technology
Eric Blair signed his books George Orwell. Mary Ann Evans published as George Eliot. Benjamin Franklin argued in print as Silence Dogood, and the Federalist Papers were signed Publius. The pen name is not a trick — it is the oldest privacy technology in the world: a way to let the work speak while the person stays their own.
The internet broke that arrangement. Online — where nearly half of all traffic is no longer human — a name with no history is indistinguishable from a bot, and the only remedy on offer is to hand over your legal identity to platforms that lose it, sell it, or hold it against you. We think that trade is beneath everyone involved.
What Mask.ID is
Mask.ID is a privacy-first identity and reputation platform. Members hold pseudonymous Mask IDs — identities only they control, anchored to a key that never leaves their device: no account to hack, no database to leak, no keys held for anyone — and build reputation the slow, honest way: referrals from real people, trust scores given peer to peer, verified links to accounts and sites they already own, and Trust Capital — value held over time that no bot farm can conjure overnight.
All of it rolls up into the Trust Index — one number a member can show anywhere, backed by evidence anyone can check, revealing nothing about who they legally are.
What we believe
Privacy is dignity, not paranoia. Disclosure is a choice members own — in both directions. Fake names and aliases are expected here.
Reputation is earned, never bought. Every trust feature is free, for everyone, forever. There is no premium tier for credibility.
Consent comes first. Nothing about you is shared without your explicit permission — no matter how Mask.ID grows.
Community, not company. Mask.ID is built and run by its members on infrastructure controlled by no one — powered by PIVX, at home in Vector, and reachable even over Tor.
Where we come from — and where we are
Mask.ID was created to solve problems first identified in the crypto-currency space — problems common to any interaction between real people and organizations anywhere on the internet. PIVX powers the wallet that signs you in, and nothing more; Why PIVX? and Why Vector? spell out exactly where our independence from the tools we build on begins and ends.
Mask.ID is early and under active development. We build in the open, ship often, and improve as real people use it. Some things will change; the values above won’t. Curious, want to help, or found something broken? The contact form in the footer reaches us — or just create your Mask: the fastest way to understand Mask.ID is to hold one.
For platforms
Building a community, a marketplace, a forum? Mask.ID lets you filter bots without harvesting data: ask members to show a Trust Index instead of a passport. You get evidence a person is real and vested; they keep their name. Reach out through the contact form — we are happy to talk integration.