Proof of unique human

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“the only winning move is not to play”, not sure if that was an intentional quote, but I like that movie.

But remember, the game is already being played, and we’re loosing, badly. In fact, your worst case scenario is already becoming a reality, driven by corporate greed (surveillance capitalism) as well as governmental self-preservation (using national security as an excuse). The dystopian version of the decency chip is all around us, and it’s being designed without the slightest regard for our privacy. It’s as if we are all bad people who deserve no privacy because there’s no other way to sort the good from the bad. Some people claim that we already lost.

I refuse to accept that.

A technology that provides everyone with the blanket of privacy is great. I advocated for it for years. But we cannot ignore the increasing threat that some technological advancements pose in the hands of the wrong people. How will you feel when a major terrorist attack is successfully carried out and you learn that they used the SAFE network to coordinate it? You know it’s not a matter of if but when, and I think we have a moral duty to at least think about ways to mitigate that threat, but in such a way as to make it virtually impossible to game the system by a minority (the autocratic power we both dislike).

We have already, it’s called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it’s probably one of the best documents ever written by humankind. Surely adapting it to something that machines can process would be a worthwhile effort to being with.

I will end my side this exchange by saying that I don’t know if this will work or not. I’m not a prophet, I can’t predict the future, but I am an optimist and like to think that it might work, specially in light of the very bleak alternative that we already find ourselves in today. What I can offer is my attention and effort in exploring this concept, which I’m doing as part of my PhD research. And because I care more about scientific integrity and exploring what is right than being right, I will try to be as unbiased as I can. If the conclusion is that “it’s a really bad idea” then I will fight against it with everything I have, which by then should be sound scientific evidence.

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I admit I was unclear. I meant the game where we try to figure out how we could weaken the system “just enough” to make sure “reasonable powers” would still get the memo about who was naughty.

We tend to think that just because that’s how everyday life works there sure must be a way to do something similar with encryption. It simply isn’t the case. Mathematics is not as flexible as everyday life.

And then of course what I keep repeating to no avail: there isn’t even a way to define what’s okay and what isn’t that them powers would all agree on. I mean, let’s start a worldwide revolution or something, fine with me… /s

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Now finished complete implementation of the proof-of-unique-human system Pseudonym Pairs. It is very simple, 160 lines of code.

Source code: PseudonymPairs.sol · GitHub
Readme: PseudonymPairs.md · GitHub

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Nice idea and implementation.

Whats your view on people actually participating? Early on and going into the future.

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I think it will be the foundation for proof-of-unique-human in the future (I have not seen a better solution and for some reason I think it adds up. ) But in the short term, before there is enough rewards for holding a “proof-of-unique-human”, people will not put in the effort to get one. There will be enthusiasts keeping a small population alive. Digital ledgers also have to get better before this system can take over, at least 1000-fold increase in transactions per second needed to support 7 billion people within Pseudonym Pairs.

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Idena is a proof-of-person blockchain that requires users to take part in synchronised events that happen from time to time to prove they are a person. Not perfect, but it seems like an interesting approach that reminded me of this topic:

It’s a bit limiting having to do something at the exact same time, but hard to see how to get around that one.

A challenge is that this may exclude a lot of people who aren’t able to carry out the tasks needed to prove they are human, though they are hoping to improve that in the future.

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No info but looks like another attempt at this (using Blockchain):

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Not much in terms of docs, looks like a web of trust again. I feel they are a great idea but don’t scale. One bad apple and all that stuff.

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I don’t know if this is directly related (or useful) but my partners at EarthID (myearth.id) are using proof of liveness technology for delivering a digital KYC service.

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Good idea, liveness. My worry there is servers or digital transmission of biometerics. However there could be some clever things here? Interesting anyway and I would never write stuff off (much like it seems I do at times). Worth more reading, which I will.

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I’m not sure I see the reasoning behind proving someone is a unique human in an anonymous network. Presumably, we will (or already do) have access to create different wallets, different “identities/data” we present to different applications, etc. I’m not sure what good putting resources into making sure people have only one login matters, at that point.

My assumption is the goal is to diminish the affect of bots registering every name under the sun in some kind of attempt at squatting, but I thought that is what paying for new accounts was for.

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If you read the op then there are some reasons given there.

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When google emails started you had to be invited by some friend then you would get 5 invitations to your new friends… remember that?

Voice recognition: what if a person loses their physical voice afterwards? Why not use finger prints and facial recognition as some extra resource?

How about hand writing patterns? AI can predict what a sentence will be like when written by someone whose data is already stored on the network…

What if you start with a single account then you earn/mine or carry out a set of tasks so in the end you may get your next anonymous accounts linked to the the first one? You´ll always have a single account but with multiple identities, besides the first one may always be kept private!

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Voting seems outside the purview of the network, unless you mean in terms of sections voting on consensus, etc. Then I could see some benefit, but the chances of having the same person/bot and their multiple accounts occupying enough parts of a section to affect outcomes is pretty astronomical. “Ranking of others” is unclear, but seems like a social credit situation of some sort. That seems nefarious at the outset. I would also say trying to make uploads “fair”, whatever that is supposed to mean, is also undesirable.

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Update on my system: I renamed it BitPeople. https://bitpeople.org. It has a lot in common with what Luke described in this thread in October 2014, earliest mention I’ve seen of a similar idea.

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Hi there !
Few days ago, I was discussing with a friend about that, and an interesting approach we’ve found was:
Using the fact that we all know each other, with an important complexity.

So the idea:
I’ve got on safe, my identity list of people I know and I trust they’re not trying to cheat.
I can send to then this encrypted list with only ids an noting more.
Maybe this friend know some in that list, but cannot determine who is the other ones.
When these trusted persons also sends me their list
Then I can publish publicly, my identifier, signing, not the list of people I know at the first connexion,
But a fraction of that list of identities that will improve the complexity of links.
My ID will link other identities, that I may don’t know personaly, but a friend I trust, trust them, so it’s ok for me.

If someone, or a group of people try to cheat, this is going to be visible, because a large group of identities trust each other, but have very limited links to the reste of the world.

So an identity can be trusted, the complexity of signers, make links with lots of people that don’t know each others. This is where it becomes more mathematical research where I cannot figure out who to determine this more precisely.

But I think, with these kind of links, it’s very difficult to determine who is each key id.
It can be enforced by changing keys every years for everybody, to limit determining who is each key.

Do you think this idea needs more research, or have you already see an approach like that ?

PS: another conclusion we have made during this discussion, is, for an electronic voting system, instead of going to vote in a closed room and put a paper in a box. We can imagine, a system that you can takes randomly a key in a box, and your local city will publish the entire list of keys given, and the number that have been taken, and the left keys are burnt. Then every body can vote online, with a valid id. A hiding process can be used like tor: you encrypt your vote in layers with randomly chosen public keys. So everybody will have to login some time to decrypt a layer of a vote of someone else to hide their identities. The last layer is the City key, and the results can be published unencrypted after the voting process has finished.

Reading this forum since a long time, but this is my first contribution :wink:

Cheers ! And I hope this project will becomes a reality soon !!!

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Your idea of leveraging a network of trusted connections to enhance digital security and privacy is interesting!

By incorporating a dynamic trust algorithm that adapts based on interaction patterns, using machine learning for anomaly detection, and employing zero-knowledge proofs for identity verification without compromising privacy, the system becomes robust against fraud.

Decentralized identity frameworks would ensure unique and verifiable identities without central authority oversight. Periodic user-controlled encryption key updates would further secure the system. For the voting mechanism, integrating with the Safe Network’s secure and anonymous data storage capabilities offers a good approach to secure electronic voting.This ensures votes are tamper-proof, verifiable, and maintain voter anonymity through the network’s distributed architecture.

You have a good idea that is not centralized. A nice contrast from World Coin which is scanning people’s irises for proof of unique human.

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