glossary
Gene
Your unforgeable identity credential in the Onli system — one Gene, one owner.
Your unforgeable identity credential in the Onli system. One Gene = one owner.
Think of your Gene like a passport that gets smarter over time. Every time you use it — to authorize an ownership change, to verify your identity, to access your Vault — its state evolves. This continuous evolution makes it impossible to forge or replay. A copy of your Gene from five minutes ago is already outdated and useless.
Your Gene is bound to your verified legal identity and tied to your Vault through hardware-level security. It's the cryptographic proof that you are who you say you are.
Format: gne-...
Also known as: Onli ID
How it works
The Gene serves three critical functions:
- Authentication — Proves your identity when you interact with the system
- Authorization — Gives you the authority to approve or deny actions on your assets
- Binding — Links you to your Vault and the Genomes inside it
Unlike a traditional password (which stays the same until you change it), the Gene evolves with every use. This makes it:
- Unforgeable — You can't create a fake Gene that will pass validation
- Non-replayable — You can't capture a Gene state and use it later
- Hardware-attested — Tied to a specific physical device through secure hardware