Privacy for Public Registries — Proof Of Humanity x VeilOS

Raymond Yeh
Coinmonks
Published in
6 min readMay 5, 2021

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You are being watched (Photo by Justice Amoh)

Introduction to POH

Proof of Humanity is a great project to create a Sybil-resistant registry of humans. By ensuring each human gets registered to the registry at most once, the project can become a core infrastructure for applications that are more vulnerable to Sybil attacks in the decentralized world. One such use case is to prevent dishonest funding activities on Gitcoin which uses a quadratic funding model which is vulnerable to Sybil attacks.

The cherry on top of the registry is getting a free Universal Basic Income (UBI) token dripped to your wallet every hour for just being a human on that registry!

The Problem

Your face, name are publicly linked to your wallet address

The registry works in a way that people can challenge any registration on the registry that they deem to be flouting the rules (ie. duplicate submissions). If found “guilty” the registrant flouting the rule will be penalized and have their deposits confiscated.

“Honestly, I do not want to challenge the wrong person and have my face used against me.

Privacy is the chief concern. Challenges can cause vendettas and social pressure should not deter challenges.” — Voices on the ground

The problem with the challenge process is that if a person uses an address on the registry to challenge another person (or bot in some case), the fear for retaliation, intimidation, or public scrutiny could become a big deterrent factor for honest actors to penalize and remove dishonest actors in the network.

Looking forward to the future where the project is used by Gitcoin for funding round 10 for more matching bonuses, more privacy problems might arise. The recent crypto boom has made many individuals in the ecosystem millionaires and they may not have the intention to reveal their newfound net worth to family, friends, and the taxman!

“Ring signatures to protect privacy sir?” — Voices on the ground

The community has been discussing various strategies around the privacy problem but it's non-trivial. The problem is not…

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Raymond Yeh
Coinmonks

Founder @ wielded.com - Generative AI Workspace for Modern Teams