Proof of Personhood in Crypto
Proof of personhood is essential in may dapps including airdrops, DAO voting, and Quadratic funding. However, there are not great solutions to do proof of personhood at scale effectively. Until today.
Existing Solutions
WorldID
World ID is probably the most well funded startup trying to give a unique ID to every user. However, World ID suffers from three problems - scaling the orbs to several millions so that everyone has access to an Orb, trust on the hardware of the Orb hasn’t been compromised or will not be compromised, sharing biometric data as a privacy concern.
There may be usecases where the reach of WorldID is acceptable and the requirements on a biometric system for acertaining personhood is of utmost importance.
BrightID
BrightID requires you to jump on a video call with strangers. These strangers will attest whether or not you are a human. The friction is way too high for most usecases. It is one of the least used proof of personhood signals on Gitcoin Passport.
Bright ID suffers from similar concerns around scalability and privacy as World ID. However, Bright ID is increasingly susceptible to deep fakes.
Social Handles
This is probably the most popular source of verification right now on dapps. This works when the proof of personhood requirement is weak - because, social media handles are easy to buy on the internet. Additionally, social handle verification needs to be done typically using an OAuth server. The entity running the OAuth server can bend the rules and arbitrarily accept or reject users as a human.
This works well when the centralized application wants weak guarantees of unique personhood. Like, for example fending off bot armies on their own servers.
Reclaim Proofs
Many of our customers are using Reclaim Proofs to acertain that the customer is a unique human. We’ve seen customers get very creative. Below are some examples of customers using data points from apps as a proof of unique personhood :
- Uber : If you’ve taken 50 rides on Uber in the last 12 months, you’re probably a human
- Strava : If you’ve run 10 km in the last week, you’re probably a human
- Steam : If you’ve played more than 100 hrs of games on Steam, you’re probably a human
Each of these applications use different proofs, most suitable to their target persona.
Scalable
Uber proofs, for example, are scalable to every city Uber is present in. Strava proofs scale to every runner on the planet. Since Reclaim proofs are purely digital, by choosing the right proof set for your app’s target audience - you can have a scalable proof of personhood.
Private
The Reclaim Proofs don’t leak any PII. A user can privately prove that they’ve taken more than 50 rides on uber without revealing their username, and yet maintaining uniqueness on the app’s system such that the same account can’t be reused by another user.
Secure
All the proofs are secured by a decentralized network and well established cryptography - TLS and ZKProofs. Our codebase is open sourced and audited by third party auditors.
If you are working on a dapp that requires proof of personhood, we’d love to help and even give you access to a closed beta of our proof of personhood sdk - hit us up!