Introducing Anima Protocol’s Proof of Personhood (PoP) on BNB

4 min readApr 4, 2023

Greetings, BNB community!
Since its launch in April 2022 on the BNB chain, Anima Protocol has made strides in the digital identity space, first with the release of its Proof of Identity (PoI) feature. Now, it takes another leap forward with the introduction of Proof of Personhood (PoP). In this article, we’ll delve into the Anima Protocol and explore how you can seamlessly incorporate it into your BNB projects.

tl;dr

Anima helps verifying users’ identity and humanity while protecting their privacy
After launching its Proof of Identity (PoI), Anima Protocol introduces the Proof of Personhood (PoP) on the BNB chain
BNB builders can leverage Anima PoP to distinguish trustworthy users from malicious actors and create bot-free communities
A documented SDK has been developed for a 1 hour integration of Anima into projects
Impossible Finance is the first Anima-integrated project on the BNB chain
Test PoP integration on your dApp or protocol with our SDK here

What is Anima

Anima dID protocol allows users to decentralize their identity and share Verified Credentials (VCs) as they see fit.
The Anima protocol is live on BNB and bridges all identity use cases — from confirming personhood of your members to meeting regulatory requirements.

Build Sybil resistance on your dApp with Anima PoP

You can build sybil resistance on your dApp by integrating the Anima SDK. The protocol helps you create trust-based communities by verifying identity attributes without compromising privacy.

The Anima Proof of Personhood (PoP) helps ensure that your community members are unique and human, which helps prevent sybil attacks and maintains community integrity. By leveraging Anima, you can develop a more secure and user-friendly authentication system on your dApps that prioritize user privacy and trust.

Dive into the protocol

Let’s understand the logic behind Anima protocol.

Anima protocol uses Verifiable Credentials (VCs) issued by Synaps to link users’ decentralized IDs to their crypto wallets, employing blockchain encryption and wallet signatures for optimal security. The protocol securely stores the Verifiable Credentials, while identity attributes such as names, nationality, and biometric data are kept in a decentralized data storage system called Storj.

These attributes can be used to verify anonymous claims or grouped into proofs for specific use cases. We have created two proofs, each possessing distinct attributes and usage:

- The Proof of Identity (PoI)

Concept: This proof is based on users’ official ID documents and biometric data.
Integrated attributes: Age, nationality, Face scan, Name, etc.
Usage: Check your users PoI to comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements

- The Proof of Personhood (PoP)

Concept: This Proof is based on users’ FaceGraph, a mathematical representation of their face created from a face scan. The FaceGraph is privacy preserving, it cannot be turned back into a visible face image.
Integrated attribute: FaceGraph
Usage: The PoP enables you to verify users’ uniqueness and humanity while ensuring that privacy is fully protected. It can be used for DAO governance, fair reward management, etc.

Anima and the BNB ecosystem

With over 22,000 Anima users as of its release in February 2023, Anima PoP offers BNB builders a way to incorporate a trustworthy authentication system, allowing them to differentiate between legitimate users and malicious actors.

Integrate Anima protocol and the PoP

An API has been developed to let you benefit from Anima on your dApp. To interact with the PoP API, you can use Anima’s official Web SDKs. Currently, the Anima PoP offers Web and React components, and support for Vue and Angular is coming soon.

Our SDK allows for easy integration of your project’s entire verification flow that is done within seconds.

You can find the step by step documentation here.

Impossible Finance: The first Anima-integrated Project on the BNB chain

Anima has a strong connection to the BNB community, as one of its earliest integrations was with Impossible Finance.

Impossible Finance leverages Anima to facilitate effortless onboarding. By enabling Anima owners to perform instant KYC verification with PoI, it streamlines the process for accessing Impossible Finance’s comprehensive services. When Anima owners connect with their wallet, users can bypass lengthy validation steps thanks to their PoI. This helps increase user adoption, engagement and retention rates by removing a significant barrier to entry.

Be the next project to integrate the Anima protocol and leverage privacy-preserving authentication to create a bot-free community. You can test our SDK integration here and access documentation there.