Over 10,000 passports have been registered on the UBIC blockchain
Introduction
The initial vision of Satoshi Nakamoto as stated in the Bitcoin whitepaper is to have a “one-CPU-one-vote” system that would let everyone participate in the mining process. Unfortunately ASIC and FGPA mining has made this approach become obsolete.
This is why UBIC tries to replicate this concept by implementing a “one-passport-one-vote” mechanism.
Many addresses have more than one passports connected to them
In its current implementation it is possible to have several passports collecting coins on the same address.
This feature was originally intended for people owning 2 passports, for a close family member usage, for married couples, or people that already share the same bank account.
What seemed to be a good idea is in fact not a so good one and this feature will be gradually removed.
Currently most addresses have 1 passport connected to it, followed by 2, 3 and so on, the peak around 6 passports is caused by the fact that the maximum number of passports that can be connected to an address has now been limited to 6.
Transaction fees are high but this is a feature
The minimum transaction fees are dynamic and will adjust over time so that 1 normal transaction will cost about 6 hours of passport minting.
High transaction fees are not a bug but a feature, they make it expensive to run a spam attack on the network and because the fee is burned to 100% they reduce the inflation.
Another good side effect of the high transaction fees is that they could give some value to the currencies of the smallest and/or poorest countries. It is indeed possible to create a transaction that is transferring for example UDE (German) coins and pay the transaction fee for it with UUA (Ukrainian) coins. So I do expect exchange or what ever entity that is doing a lot of transfers to buy and use those cheaper currencies.
There are many countries not supported yet but this will change
All African union countries are issuing NFC chipped passports by now and this has become an international mandatory standard.
However to add all those countries on UBIC we need to get our hands on Document Signing Certificates, theoretically all ICAO conform biometric passports could be added, but some countries haven’t followed the ICAO recommendations. So it is better to first check if there are any compatibility issues.
You can help in this process by scanning your passport with the Android Bondi Passport Reader app. The app only collects technical information about your passport including the Document Signing Certificate and the date of expiry.
Lessons learned
Having a one country, one currency approach, with all currencies running on the same blockchain is probably a better approach than having a global currency, if there is misuse in one country this does not affect the currencies of the other nations.
What is coming next?
More countries will be added soon, I really hope to see South Korea, Russia, and some African countries to have the ability to join as I expect that they have a high potential.
More research is currently done on the proper ways to decentralize the UBIC blockchain, one proposal is to use the passport to do proof of work, another one is to use a delegated proof-of-passport.
Conclusion
I have been contacted by some people working in the passport space and it seems that a lot of applications in the future will take advantage of the NFC chip contained within the passport.
If you have one it is very likely that you will scan it at least once in this coming decade, may be not to join UBIC, but perhaps to get an E-Visa, open a bank account or do your taxes.
Many people have criticized UBIC for excluding unbanked people because they usually don’t have a passport. I do not see it that way, UBIC may very well incentivize those people to get a passport, and perhaps some one will come up with a loan service that would for example pay for passport fees in exchange of one year of minting reward.
