honestly… i've been thinking about what it means to start over.
not by choice. the kind that gets decided for you.
a family moves. a government changes. a database gets wiped in a conflict nobody outside the region ever hears about. and suddenly someone who had a name, a history, a paper trail proving they existed… doesn't anymore.
not because they disappeared.
because the record did.
and here's the thing about records.
we treat them like they're neutral. like they just… capture reality. but they don't. they're built by institutions, maintained by institutions, and taken away by institutions. the record isn't you. it's just what the system decided to remember about you.
and when the system forgets… you have to start from zero.
no history means no proof. no proof means no trust. no trust means every door you walk up to asks you to prove yourself again from scratch. and you can't. because the thing that was supposed to prove it is gone.
that's the problem SIGN is quietly pointing at.
not the technical version. the human version.
what if the record belonged to you instead of to the institution that created it? what if it traveled with you? what if starting over didn't mean becoming invisible?
i don't know if SIGN solves this completely.
the gap between protocol and reality is wide and full of things that don't care about good intentions.
but the question it's asking is the right one.
and that's not something i can say about most things in this space.