How to Verify Your Mastodon Account with Keybase
Tags: security, keybase, mastodon, tutorial
Published: 2019-07-27 10:41:42

---
title: How to Verify Your Mastodon Account with Keybase
published: true
tags: security, keybase, mastodon, tutorial
canonical_url: https://ryanmaynard.co/mastodon-keybase
---

![mastodon and keybase logos](https://ryanmaynard.co/images/mastodon/mastodonkeybase.png)

*This article was originally posted on my [personal site](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools) on April 8, 2017*

At the time of this writing, the decentralized network [Mastodon](https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon) has recently surged in popularity out of relative obscurity. Anyone can spin up their own mastodon instance on<!--excerpt--> their own domain, with their own rules. The collective of all inter-connected instances is being called the Fediverse. There is a great list of Mastodon instance [here](https://instances.mastodon.xyz/).

#### Identity Verification

As with any newer social network, there is the question of identity verification. Do you need to create your preferred username on all instances in order to prevent abuse? How are you to verify yourself?

Keybase does not have an in-built option to verify one’s Mastodon account yet. Chris Coyne, Keybase founder, [tweeted about whether or not he should wait to implement it](https://twitter.com/malgorithms/status/850075699130052608), in case there are major structural changes to Mastodon in the oncoming weeks. That seems to be a reasonable concern.

![Chris Coyne tweet](https://ryanmaynard.co/images/mastodon/coyne-tweet.png)

For the time being, you can simply sign a message with Keybase to verify yourself.

##### Create your Keybase proof

Make sure you have installed the [keybase cli](https://keybase.io/docs/command_line).

```
keybase sign -m "Hi! I'm @you@mastodonserver.tld on Mastodon."
```

For example, here is mine:

```
keybase sign -m "Hi! I'm @ryanmaynard@mastodon.cloud on mastodon
```

Take the result, and make a post on your Mastodon account [like so](https://mastodon.cloud/@ryanmaynard/211915).

![Keybase Sign](https://ryanmaynard.co/images/mastodon/keybase-sign.png)

##### Verify a Keybase proof

Take the contents of a posted proof, and place it in a file.

```
keybase verify < keybase_proof_filename
```

The results should appear something like this:

![Keybase Verification](https://ryanmaynard.co/images/mastodon/keybase-verify.png)

##### Alternative Keybase Proof

Another method you can use, it to post a public proof using the [Keybase filesystem, KBFS](https://keybase.io/docs/kbfs)

You can post a variant of `I am <username> on Mastodon`

```
cd /keybase/public/username/
touch mastodonproof.md
```

Would be visible at

```
https://keybase.pub/username/mastodonproof.md
```

You can also add `index.html` or `index.md` to your `/keybase/username/` folder and it will be accessible at `username.keybase.pub`

For example, [here is mine](https://ryanmaynard.keybase.pub).

![Keybase Pub](https://ryanmaynard.co/images/mastodon/keybase-pub.png)

Thank you [@todb](https://mastodon.xyz/@todb) for [this idea](https://mastodon.xyz/@todb/206070), and thank you [@seabre](https://mastodon.xyz/@seabre) for pointing it out to me.

#### Find Your Friends

If you want to “import” a few of your Twitter followers at the start, there is an unofficial [app hosted on Heroku, Mastodon Bridge](https://mastodon-bridge.herokuapp.com/). It goes without saying: use at your own risk.

#### Followbots

Someone has put together a [followbot](https://github.com/gled-rs/mastodon-autofollow), if that is your thing.

#### Support

If you like Mastodon, don’t hesitate to toss a few dollars to the developer, Gargron. Here is his [Patreon page](https://www.patreon.com/user?u=619786). There are also plenty of [issues](https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues) to be resolved, if you want to help that way.