While I think Persona is way better than password-based auth, I can&#x27;t help but feel that it&#x27;s also a sideways step. No, authentication should be provided by the user-agent, not by some third party identity provider (even if you control it by running your own). We have this for ssh: you have your private ssh key and it&#x27;s up to you to manage having it in the right places (work desktop, laptop, phone, etc.) It&#x27;s clunky, but that&#x27;s OK: it&#x27;s aimed at tech people.<p>Browsers should do something similar: provide a storage for private and public keys as proof of identity. But they should additionally provide a way to sync those identities across multiple browsers and machines. This latter concept will be familiar to anyone who has used LastPass. The former, well it should basically be a dropdown with your identities, and you choose one before clicking the &quot;Login&quot; button.