Isn't gpg already a convenient cli for basic gpg tasks? We have had public keystores (much like github) for decades. There are probably already links to some on your system.

Not for end-users it isn't. Even for someone who knows what they're doing, it's a PITA.

Well, it isn't a PITA for me, and I couldn't imagine pointing my grandmother at keybase.io yet (but I could imagine installing a cert in her mail client for her). Maybe they have a sweet spot there and I am willing to accept I just don't yet understand who fits. But I don't think I'm that special, and I use gpg happily (and efficiently) every day.

> Isn't gpg already a convenient cli for basic gpg tasks?

There's no way within GPG to easily determine whether you have a trust path to a given key unless you have all the intermediate keys already.

I suggest you read "Thoughts on keybase.io" (http://blog.lrdesign.com/2014/03/thoughts-on-keybase-io/), it touches the "roll your own" points as well as authentication and consequences like vendor lock-in.

If you came late in this thread or somehow still believe keybase.io equals rolling your own system, sokrates wrote a good description of what keybase.io does lower in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7465349

The big assumption keybase.io seems to challenge here is that your online identity doesn't consist only of your public key.