I don't know if this matches academia, but in my usage "identity" means that a user can prove they are the same user ("A user can establish that they are identical to another user.") What you're looking for is demonstrating uniqueness ("A user can establish that they are identical to no other user of the system"). I think that is a part of "identification", as you say, although my usage of "identification" might include mapping to other information (govt. records or similar). I don't know which of these MaidSafe is assuming - the first is not hard, UI notwithstanding. The others are.

Yes, as far as anybody seriously believes this is completely impossible. Their "solution" will likely be not one at all. There's several comments floating around that MaidSafe has saved all of the people who bought MasterCoin and didn't have anywhere to dump it due to the markets being too shallow. I'm inclined to believe that's more the purpose than anything.