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What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

vitalik.ca

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Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#41

Post by eis »

It always comes down to trust. With WorldCoin you have to trust a private company which in turn trusts random "Orb Operators" to operate the Orb devices which you again have to trust. For a system which wants to be used for UBI and voting the incentives are too strong to not to abuse this big amount of required trust.

It doesn't matter if the source code and hardware plans of the Orbs are made public if we can't inspect a given Orb. Who's to say if that Orb doesn't generate 10% more IDs for someone than real ones.

You think those concerns are theoretical? Well there has been already abuse before the project officially was launched: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...

And then there is the inflationary nature of the coin itself due to the weekly issueance of coins for each user. This gives an incentive for the people behind the project like Sam Altman and Andressen Horowitz to cash out their part. They allocated 20% of the whole supply to themselves. A quarter billion dollars was put into the project and you can bet they'll want a good return on it while trying to portrait it as something like a charitable project.

I remain very sceptical.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#42

Post by intelVISA »

monero-xmr wrote: post #7

There needs to be decentralized ID using an open protocol with any vendor able to join. The quality of those vendors will be based upon which firms trust them. I do think blockchain makes sense here, because the trust layer is decentralized and the native cryptographic signing primitives means it can’t be spoofed nor manipulated in a proprietary database locked from the public. No idea if world coin is a workable sol…

I share the sentiment. It's sad that given the tools available to securely verify someone without exposing PII we still scan people's ID and shrug when they get leaked/resold/etc. (By design, of course)

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#43

Post by thinkmassive »

kstrauser wrote: post #18

I think that’s dead on arrival in the US. Having been raised in a conservative evangelical church, there’s the notion that in the “end times”, this kind of thing (referred to as the “mark of the Beast”) would be required to buy and sell goods, at the cost of eternal damnation for getting the mark. The linked webpage is nightmare fuel for the many tens of millions of Americans in such churches. Everything about it is…

> why do we suddenly need to prove who’s an actual human?

Voting and UBI are often cited as valuable use cases.

It will definitely be subverted if it becomes widespread enough to be impactful.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#44

Post by JohnFen »

Mistletoe wrote: post #33
rqtwteye wrote: post #10

Buterin reminds me a little of string theorists in physics. There is a lot of intellect but they have chosen to chase something that doesn't produce anything really useful despite a ton of effort.

Ethereum may not be useful to you but it is very useful to me and many others. It will become even more useful in the future as people learn what happens when your money is centralized to one particular government, based on nothing at all, and just keeps getting printed more and more of. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debasement I think crypto solving this issue is definitel…

> I think crypto solving this issue is definitely of value.

I am far from convinced that cryptocurrencies are actually a solution to this, but even if it is -- at what price? Not all solutions are worth the cost. I am not saying cryptocurrency would fail this test, but I am saying that it's a mistake to proceed without a genuine cost/benefit analysis.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#45

Post by worksonmine »

Interesting, I didn't know the space was thinking about proof-of-personhood. I've been entertaining the thought of something similar for years, to solve a lot of the problems we face.

A rough and very simplified version of the way I see it working is:

- When someone is born a private-key is created just like an SSN today and a fixed amount of coins are created on that "wallet"

- The amount would be based on the actual resources of the planet that are reasonable to spend during a life (inspired by Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project)

- The protocol would have a negative income tax set at a threshold where basic needs are met, so the broke would get UBI, the rich pay taxes

- Progressive tax to prevent ridiculous hoarding where the top 0.1% own almost everything (hoarding finite resources is a work around still to be solved)

- When someone dies that money could still be inherited, or when no next of kin and no will exists distributed to the poor as UBI

- Exploiting global resources would and should be costly

- There could still be corporations but they wouldn't create new coins

I see this solving a lot of problems:

- No more printing money to solve short term problems

- Everyone starts their adult life with some coin that could go towards education, drivers license etc

- No more tax havens since taxation is built into the protocol

- No more need for many of the government agencies we have today, reducing need for taxes

- Encourages a more circular economy with less waste

It's not perfect but I think it would be a nice compromise between the endless discussions of socialism vs capitalism.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#46

Post by Tade0 »

kstrauser wrote: post #18

I think that’s dead on arrival in the US. Having been raised in a conservative evangelical church, there’s the notion that in the “end times”, this kind of thing (referred to as the “mark of the Beast”) would be required to buy and sell goods, at the cost of eternal damnation for getting the mark. The linked webpage is nightmare fuel for the many tens of millions of Americans in such churches. Everything about it is…

> Now having eyes is new our fundamental definition of being a human.

Well, alternatively, everyone has a skull - it's the most human symbol imaginable.

Getting a reliable image of that repeatedly might prove tricky though.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#47

Post by all2 »

hinkley wrote: post #29
kstrauser wrote: post #18

I think that’s dead on arrival in the US. Having been raised in a conservative evangelical church, there’s the notion that in the “end times”, this kind of thing (referred to as the “mark of the Beast”) would be required to buy and sell goods, at the cost of eternal damnation for getting the mark. The linked webpage is nightmare fuel for the many tens of millions of Americans in such churches. Everything about it is…

Use your guide dog as your iris scan! On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

So you need a new ID every 10 years? How would this work out practically? I the parent is a bit facetious, but I'm still curious.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#48

Post by JohnFen »

monero-xmr wrote: post #7

There needs to be decentralized ID using an open protocol with any vendor able to join. The quality of those vendors will be based upon which firms trust them. I do think blockchain makes sense here, because the trust layer is decentralized and the native cryptographic signing primitives means it can’t be spoofed nor manipulated in a proprietary database locked from the public. No idea if world coin is a workable sol…

> Why I have to constantly scan my ID for various vendors is absurd.

What are you scanning your ID for? I've never had to do that a single time.

Re: What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?

#50

Post by hinkley »

all2 wrote: post #47
hinkley wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use your guide dog as your iris scan! On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

So you need a new ID every 10 years? How would this work out practically? I the parent is a bit facetious, but I'm still curious.

Great news. We can't seem to use the same tech for more than about 6 years so just switch platforms every time you get a new guide dog.

(and yes, I'm being very facetious)

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