Anonymous and Sybil-protected identity is a missing part in Internet applications, blockchains, and self-sovereign identity space.
The design requirements of this decentralized anonymous identity to a large extent follow the properties introduced by Bitcoin:
- Global and verifiable online
- Permissionless and inclusive
- Decentralized, without reliance on trusted third parties
- Sybil-protected
- Anonymous and privacy-preserving
- Censorship-resistant and plausibly deniable
The potential solution is a proof of the humanness and uniqueness by running a collective simultaneous online AI-hard Turing test.
Flip Challenge is proposed as a language-neutral AI-hard test that conveys narrative rather than semantic meaning. A flip, “Filter for Live Intelligent People,” utilizes four images. To solve a flip, the participant chooses between two sequences of these images, only one of which makes narrative sense. The other one is deliberately distorted so that the picture sequence does not convey linear story information.
Flips are created by validated participants, stored as encrypted data in the network before validation, and then algorithmically distributed.
The network reaches consensus on flip answers, scores accuracy, awards coins for each valid flip, and approves validated identities.
If consensus on a flip is not reached, then the flip is disqualified. Answers for disqualified flips are not counted. Users creating meaningless flips or spam or flips with inappropriate content are subject to reward slashing.
The uniqueness of participants is proven by the fact that they must solve flips synchronously. Flips are decrypted at the same time world wide. A single person is not able to validate herself multiple times because of the limited timeframe for the submission of answers.
Described procedure serves as a Proof-of-Identity Sybil control mechanism for the public blockchain underlying the network. The blockchain structure is used to store the state of validated identities, implement cryptoeconomic incentives for network participants, and enable transactions of the native coin and additional data (e.g. P2P-encrypted messages).
Every full node of such blockchain is a validated person with an equal chance to be rewarded for the minting of new blocks and equal voting power in the consensus and governance process.
Potential use cases for decentralized anonymous identity:
- Fair voting in online communities. A unique identity proof (one ID per person) can be used to distribute voting credits to the individual members of the community to ensure fairness. Modern voting technologies such as Quadratic Voting can be implemented to engage the crowd to participate in the collective decision-making process.
- Direct marketing and value airdrops. The new business model could be based on the consensual self-monetization of personal information and proactive intentional disclosure initiated by the user. Based on such intentional information-sharing, advertisers could provide the best deals and pay the user directly to view and utilize them. Internet services and apps could distribute utility tokens, rewards, tokenized coupons, and discounts. This model would be possible only when advertisers and businesses are protected from Sybil attacks.
- Serverless messenger and in-chat payments. The network of independent nodes can securely store a queue of undelivered P2P-encrypted messages. Spam attacks are prevented by assigning a minor friction in the form of a transaction fee and a decentralized storage rent fee.
- Free speech publishing. The identity network can be used as a decentralized storage for publications and whistleblowing information to build censorship-free publishing platforms, which are protected from bots manipulating content discovery.
- Global universal basic income (UBI). A full node of the identity blockchain could be light enough to run on an average laptop. Participation in the network is rewarded with minting and can be considered as a form of the universal basic income sufficient to cover the network services (for example, sending messages) as well as the bill for the Internet service and electricity consumed.
- Attestation of human uniqueness for SSI. The anonymous unique identity provider can be integrated with other self-sovereign identity systems to verify claims of uniqueness.