Re: Who Watches the Watchmen? A Review of Subjective Approaches for Sybil-resistance in Proof of Personhood Protocols

Of course that is true. However, I think ways that a system might be
co-opted by nation-state actors are pretty different from ways that a
system might be co-opted by an ordinary scammer. Protecting against
malicious nation-state actors is often beyond the kinds of technology we
can bring to bear.

On Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:12 AM Adam Stallard <adam.stallard@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Daniel.Hardman,
>
> Yes, and have you seen what UBIC is doing with e-passports?
> https://github.com/UBIC-repo/Whitepaper#sybil-resistance . The question
> of "who watches the watchers" still remains. We can't see what's going on
> behind the walls of a centralized ID issuing organization or know whether
> they are making sybils themselves.
>
> --Adam
>
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 10:00 AM Daniel Hardman <
> daniel.hardman@evernym.com> wrote:
>
>> There is a way to do one person one vote without losing anonymity. It
>> uses a Sybil-resistant VC (e.g., a passport or driver's license that gets
>> its Sybil resistance from some centralized system), but WITHOUT disclosing
>> any strong correlator for the person in question; the verifier knows
>> whether a person has already "voted" (or any similar once-per-person
>> action) but need not know ANY other attribute of the person. Furthermore,
>> the holder of the credential is fully aware that this technique is active,
>> and can thus opt in or choose not to cooperate, if they prefer. Balance of
>> powers. It was first described in a seminal paper "Clone Wars" paper by Jan
>> Camenisch; for the less mathematically inclined, it was described at RWOT9,
>> here
>> <https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rwot9-prague/blob/master/topics-and-advance-readings/zkp-safety.md#technique-2-prevent-link-secret-reuse>
>> .
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 1:11 PM Adam Stallard <adam.stallard@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 1:03 AM email@yancy.lol <email@yancy.lol> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I agree that a one-person-per-vote system is ideal, however it's hard
>>>> map such a system to cyber space directly without a central authority.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It's hard, but that's what we're doing. Instead of trusting a central
>>> authority, users should trust an anti-sybil algorithm they can verify
>>> themselves.
>>>
>>>
>>> Consider how one-vote-per-cpu can allow a way to directly prove the
>>>> number of identities (cpus).  For example we know some entity is 10 cpus
>>>> because they solve x of the last y blocks.  There is no need to trust any
>>>> authority, only the  solution.
>>>>
>>>> I think Git system might be the closest to one-person-per-vote where
>>>> you can know about how many people contribute to the longest known chain of
>>>> commits of a git repo (the trunk branch) aka the current consensus.  Of
>>>> course this doesn't map directly for a number of reasons (people are not
>>>> simple cpus for one).
>>>>
>>>> -Yancy
>>>>
>>>> On Wednesday, September 09, 2020 19:09 CEST, Adam Stallard <
>>>> adam.stallard@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Verifiable credentials can certainly help. At BrightID, we're working
>>>> on way for a decentralized group of computer nodes that analyze an
>>>> anonymous social graph and make determinations about uniqueness to
>>>> collaborate to sign a credential for a user.
>>>>
>>>> These credentials also have a notion of "context" to avoid unwanted
>>>> linkage between a user as they participate in various apps and networks. A
>>>> user of app A should be able to prove they're using only one account there
>>>> without linking that account to an account in app B.
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Sep 9, 2020, 3:55 AM Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I think this was the important insight of the paper here.  And I
>>>>> wonder if it can be solved with verifiable credentials?
>>>>>
>>>>> "If blockchains are to become a significant public infrastructure,
>>>>> particularly in the space of civic engagement, then Proof of Work's
>>>>> “one-CPU-one-vote” or Proof of Stake's “one-dollar-one-vote” systems will
>>>>> not suffice: in order to enable democratic governance, protocols that
>>>>> signal unique human identities to enable "one-person-one-vote" systems must
>>>>> be created."
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, 9 Sep 2020 at 12:50, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> PDF is here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008..05300.pdf
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Keywords: decentralized identity, Sybil-protection, crypto-governance
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Abstract.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Most self-sovereign identity systems consist of strictly objective
>>>>>> claims, cryptographically signed by trusted third party attestors. Lacking
>>>>>> protocols in place to account for subjectivity, these systems do not form
>>>>>> new sources of legitimacy that can address the central question concerning
>>>>>> identity authentication: "Who verifies the verifier?". Instead, the
>>>>>> legitimacy of claims is derived from traditional centralized institutions
>>>>>> such as national ID issuers and KYC providers. Thisarchitecture has been
>>>>>> employed, in part, to safeguard protocols from a vulnerability previously
>>>>>> thought to be impossible to address in peer-to-peer systems: the Sybil
>>>>>> attack, which refers to the abuse of an online system by creating many
>>>>>> illegitimate virtual personas. Inspired by the progress in cryptocurrencies
>>>>>> and blockchain technology, there has recently been a surge in networked
>>>>>> protocols that make use of subjective inputs such as voting, vouching,and
>>>>>> interpreting, to arrive at a decentralized and sybil-resistant consensus
>>>>>> for identity. In this review, we will outline the approaches of these new
>>>>>> and natively digital sources of authentication - their attributes,
>>>>>> methodologies strengths, and weaknesses - and sketch out possible
>>>>>> directions for future developments.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, 9 Sep 2020 at 03:21, Wayne Chang <wyc@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.05300
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> discussion from strangers on the internet:
>>>>>>> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24411076
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>