What is Upala. All you need to know (Outdated)
Upala is here to help you to distinguish other humans from bots.
Greetings human!
We are developing an identity proof system Upala. Its purpose is to distinguish people from bots and clones (people with multiple IDs). One person — one ID. It is a huge goal. To get there we started a series of posts, showing our thinking process. We will then transform these posts into whitepaper.
This document is a summary of everything we’ve done so far. The document is meant to be short and easy to understand, with no technical details.
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The best place to learn about Upala is now — The Pale Blue Paper.
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Motivation (why we do it)
• ID for the poor and the repressed
There are 1,1 bln people in the world with no ID at all. Their access to education, job, property rights, banking services, etc. is restricted.
There are people living under authoritarian leadership. Anyone resisting the regime cannot be free.
And finally there are people living in extreme poverty. Universal basic income is almost here to help them, but it cannot be efficient without a reliable ID system.
Make unique humans not war — decentralized identity is the question of peace.
• A more secure and private ID
We believe it is possible to build a decentralized digital identity which is more reliable than any state issued ID. We believe there is a way to make it theft and fraud proof. And definitely there is a way to add better privacy to identity.
• ID for the Internet
We are creating IDs for humans, not bots. Fake accounts are evolving. We have to build an even faster evolving system to oppose them.
Also read Personal motivation and Upala branding.
Features
• Proof of uniqueness
One person — one ID. An alternative to state issued ID.
• Disclosure on demand
Decide which pieces of information to share.
• Friends recover each other’s accounts
In blockchain your private key is your responsibility. We would like to share this responsibility with friends. So that there is a way to recover your account in a decentralized way.
Challenges
• Sybil attack protection
How to prevent malicious actors (individuals, groups) from creating multiple accounts?
• Account recovery
Mnemonics are too complex, hardware tokens are rare and expensive. How to build a secure system for the unskilled, the absent-minded and the naive?
• Incentives
Who is gonna pay for the game? Who is gonna earn and how much?
• Adoption
Until widely adopted Upala cannot be called an identity system. It needs a lot of businesses and a lot of users right from the start. How can we engage people even before there is an identity system?
Approach
• Do the research
Be brave and stupid. Bring big and crazy ideas. Assemble, make it work on paper first.
• Make it self-sustainable
Money from an external source is influence. Make Upala self-sustainable. Generate enough income to keep good incentives for users and developers… But please please Petr raise some funds for the research.
• Chose the right game
Make Upala properties quantitative! Provide human uniqueness probability (the real, the mathematical one, equally measured by any independent outside observer).
• Deliver in parts
Split the system into meaningful parts. Deliver as soon as there are outlines of an MVP.
Progress
The best place to learn about Upala is now — The Pale Blue Paper.
Progress — Sybil attack protection
We’ve gone through some abstract brainstorming to a solution using dynamic proof of location by FOAM (shiny new tech right from the future) and then to our Random handshakes anti-Sybil mechanism. See it below.
Currently we are exploring a trust-based solution. The first idea is Bot market (see below).
It does matter who you are, where you are and who you friends with. We often use this as a metaphor to shape our thinking.
Random handshakes (link)
Every user has a global and a local reputation. Local means geographically local. Users earn local reputation when they meet each other in person in random pairs and confirm each other’s “humanness”. Face recognition algorithm detects sibyls. Two cities establish a connection when their citizens travel. The more travelers the better. Global reputation is calculated by “routing” local user’s reputation to the global level. Points of reputation are lost at connections with low bandwidth.
Bot market (link)
If we can’t prove that bot is a bot, let’s give bot owners what they want — a convenient bot market and bot management tools. This way we will know the number of bots and their cost. Quality control layer for an anti-Sybil system. The idea is “pluggable” into any anti-Sybil mechanism.
Progress — Incentives
Heal for profit (link)
Users are rewarded with Reputation token for any action healing the system. Reputation cannot be transferred, but it can be converted into Interaction token. Services buy Interaction tokens and pay for user authentication with it.
Progress — Account recovery
UPD. 24.10.2016 — Account recovery in a decentralized system
It makes sense to deliver system in parts. Recovery mechanism could be an independent project. It can help grow user base.
Progress — Adoption
Just keeping adoption in mind (adoption gap). If we deliver a self-sustainable game in meaningful parts this challenge will be resolved.
Team
Peter Porobov — Project Lead, Researcher, Smart Contracts.
Entrepreneur. Dreamed of connecting the world in six handshakes since high school. Founded startups in 3d-printing and art, helped to build and sell drones. In May 2016 fell in love with Ethereum. Created a charity project. In January 2019 started research on Upala.
Github, Facebook, Medium, VK, Twitter
Andrei Bolkisev — Advisor, Economic models.
Andrei Bolkisev is an information systems engineer and programmer with 13 years of experience and Ph.D. in computational physics. As information systems engineer he was leading projects ranged from state-scaled information systems to micro-controllers programming. In computation physics, he worked on developing novel methods applied to combustion of solids modeling (structure of heterogeneous solids simulation and analysis, chemical kinetics models developing, solving of stiff PDE systems). As for now, he is most interested in investigating social and economic dynamics.
UPDATES
20.12.2019 — The best place to learn about Upala is now — The Pale Blue Paper.
25.09.2019 — Decentralized password manager is the first step in building decentralized digital identity
24.10.2019 — Account recovery in a decentralized system
Join us/Subscribe
Twitter, Telegram channel, Telegram chat, GitHub, Reddit, Medium
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Please donate: Ethereum, Bitcoin, Zcash, PayPal. Or buy advertisement space (help Upala and charity).
