Unika Solves a Puzzle of User Identification in Web3
Are you familiar with such a type of narration as magical realism? If yes, then you would find many parallels between the ideas of Web3 and the plot described by Jorge Luis Borges in his story ‘Funes the Memorius’. The idea of the story is that a young teenager after a fall from a horse acquired an amazing talent — remembering everything. Does it ring any bells to you? Do we have a system unfolding right before our very eyes that is capable of remembering everything? I guess everyone would agree that the blockchain network is the system.
Unika is a group of blockchain enthusiasts who found a possibility to create an identity layer that is capable to connect users to their blockchain addresses (on any blockchain) and grow together with the users’ activity online, in other words, gathering personal imprints through a never forgetting ecosystem which is decentralized and censorship-resistant. It means that no entity could change anything, erase, substitute, or manipulate the ‘memory’ of the system. This identity could be incorporated in one place — Unika decentralized anonymous identification protocol giving users full control over their private data.
When decentralized identity becomes massively adopted, people would be able to bring entire selves to cyberspace navigation. Their experiences and affinities would be represented in anything they create, earn, present, or own regardless of the platform. This would bring the Web3 identity very close to the one in the real world, unlike the present fragmented Web2 identity coming apart with numerous logins and passwords across the Internet. Some of you may say that giant corporations like Google and Apple are helping us to get pieces of our Web2 identity back together and store it in one place but have you thought about what price we are paying for this act of kindness? Web2 identity paradigm is fundamentally flawed because it’s controlled by companies rather than individuals.
Decentralized identity instead is very real, moreover, if it is present in the ecosystem which never forgets anything and keeps a record of every small detail, we have a cyber reality where users’ identities cannot be faked. Whatever people do online: post an article, create any data, participate in a development project, get gaming achievements, etc. stays with them unchanged (unless they choose to delete it). But let’s start from the beginning. To be able to compare Unika to other ID providers let’s investigate the topic of user identification in Web3.
Web3 Approaches to User Identification
If we gather together several means of user authenticity verification in the Web3 ecosystem, we will end up with three main approaches which are used more often online. All of them have their strong and weak slides. Let’s analyze them shortly and figure out which is the ideal way to identify an individual in a decentralized ecosystem without revealing their personality.
Transaction Identification
All public blockchains, which form the majority in the present Web3 ecosystem, let each user get access to information about any transaction ever made online. In addition to seeing users’ addresses and the amount of assets to transfer, other types of data could be visible. Based on this some systems could use such data to analyze the way users behave online. In other words, we deal here with the unique imprint of the user. Having an opportunity to track it, the individual rating could be introduced. Anyway, transactional identification cannot fully protect against multi-account attacks, and still leaves some probability of fake data creation.
Social Identification
This type of user identification is based on other people, in other words, social circles of any particular user to testify on their behalf. A social approach was introduced to minimize the risk of fake identity. The existing systems use different types of information (criteria or achievements) to verify a user. It could be playing a computer game together, participating in project development, getting prizes in a hackathon, or another type of online activity that includes collaboration between individuals. The logic behind social identification is the following: gaining a reputation takes time, and that’s why an expected reaction of a user is to continue building it up in the given ecosystem rather than start new accounts without the possibility to use the benefits provided to trusted users. Though this approach is effective to fight multi-accounts, it also brings the risk of deanonymization alongside fake data provision by malicious users. In addition to this, the initial group of verified users had to prove their identity by sending videos of themselves and no one can be sure how safe the storage of these videos is and do the users have any control over their information.
Personal Identification
This approach involves the direct collection of data from the person. These could be biometric data and/or identity documents. The next step is to analyze this data and store it. Taking into consideration the guidelines of the Web3 ecosystem, there cannot be any centralized storage facility and users should be given full control over their data, which is a huge obstacle in the way of developing any trustworthy solution for personal identification in Web3. Also, during the verification users could try to tamper with the process of identification either by hacking the initial software or giving false information about their identity. There are two main groups of software used for personal identification in Web3:
- Manual Checkup Software
This group is formed by solutions resting on decentralized networks of verified identities, which are identifying new users. To make the network secure and resilient, the verified members keep checking and rechecking each other at regular intervals. If there is a confirmed case of an illegitimate user getting into the network, the verified member who discovered it gets a reward, and the one who initiated it is punished.
- Computer Checkup Software
User identification software built solely on algorithms manifests a more confidential and secure way but is much more difficult to build to comply with Web3 regulations. The system should be built on anonymity when it processes personal data and stores it, which doesn’t seem to be realistic in our modern conditions.
The existing solutions for Web3 personal identification are not functional enough. Either their functionality is very narrow and they cannot be used for multiple purposes (i.e. Humanode), or the identification process requires the usage of special hardware which slows down its adoption (Worldcoin).
Unika Revolutionizes Web3 Personal Identification
Though it’s hard to believe, the Unika team found a way to bring high standards of user identification into the Web3 environment. It’s a truly decentralized protocol developed in a blockchain agnostic fashion to operate on any kind of blockchain. In terms of approaches to user identification, Unika falls into the category of personal identification software with the inbuilt facial recognition module and an opportunity to add other modules of biometric identification to the system. Let’s discuss what makes Unika the best match for any Web3 service provider in terms of user identification and how it manages to provide full user control over sensitive data.
- Deanonymization
Based on the data given in the table above, the possibility of revealing a user’s personality in the case of Unika is 0%, unlike other types of identification delivered by different solutions. There are technical explanations of how Unika manages to provide complete anonymity during the identification process and we are planning to discuss it in our next post. Stay tuned!
2. Multi-Accounts and Fake Data Risks
The integration of the Unika protocol into DAO platforms, Web3 games, or any other networks subjected to the Sybil attack helps to reduce the risk of account misuse. Unika is able to link users’ blockchain addresses to their biometric data. Right now there is one fully functioning biometric module in Unika architecture — facial recognition which provides tests on liveliness and could accurately identify the person. It means that if a user has any other blockchain addresses all of them could be linked to only one real human. Moreover, Unika identification is processed in TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) which attests to the integrity of the initial code and provides the highest level of confidentiality.
3. User Actions Required
Compared to other solutions executing personal, transactional, and social verification, Unika requests a medium level of user engagement. This mostly includes sending a request for identification through the uDapp, testing the hardware, running TEE during the identification procedure, and performing a simple test of facial manipulations, i.e. turning the head to the left or nodding, etc. The big chunk of user identification and verification is done by validators — attested uNodes assigned for authentication activities. Any user could become a validator and start earning through verifying new users.
Summary
Web3 is introducing quite an unorthodox way compared to Web2 of user-Web interaction. It places a user in the middle of communication creating a user-centric environment that puts restrictions on the software characteristics. The pervading features of Web3 are security, openness, and decentralization which brings users in full control of their identities. Unika has been working around ‘the identity language’ in Web3 for a couple of years and now is ready to provide first-class services in this field.
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