> So your email provider doesn't know where you're logging in.
This is already the case. For browsers that use the shim, the certificate is stored in localStorage on the login.persona.org domain, and then given to the website you're trying to login to.
Whichever technology you want to use is fine. You need to publish 3 routes: /.well-known/browserid, an auth route, and a provision route.
The auth and provision routes need to be HTML pages that authenticate you however you want, and then sign a certificate with your key that you publish the .well-known file.
In short: easier to implement, everyone has an email address, improved privacy. OpenID tells the provider every time you log in to any website, Persona does not.
Actually, the the verifier (verifier.login.persona.org) runs code that could be run on any server. It _does_ check Gmail for the well-known file first, and then, since not found, uses the fallback of login.persona.org.
As soon as Gmail (or any id provider) implements a well-known file, the verifier will immediately use that instead.
And the script that does all this _could_ be run on your own server. The only reason we don't quite yet tell people to do that is to be absolutely sure the verifier is correct in every step. It's harder to get everyone to upgrade their own server, so while in beta, we offer the verifier.
I don't think it's so much to keep working on the prototype afterwards, but to be able to export it out of the tool (Napkin) and still be able to easily show someone your prototype.