Vitalik: Airdrops are an appealing use case for blockchain identity verification, Worldcoin singled out

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently shared his thoughts on Twitter, stating that he believes airdrops align perfectly with the properties of so-called blockchain-based identity verification. He specifically mentioned Worldcoin by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as an application of identity verification, although he noted there is still room for improvement to align with his ideals.

Vitalik Buterin Discusses Digital Governance, Identity Verification, and Airdrops, Endorses Starknet Airdrop Rules

Vitalik Buterin stated that airdrops are a fascinating initial use case for ZK zero-knowledge proofs/blockchain identity verification.

As airdrops aim to:

1. Be distributed to community members who do not immediately sell (paper hands, meaning those who sell easily)
2. Reward contributions to projects
3. Pursue equality but accept some differentiation
4. Combat fraudulent/meaningless reward tasks

Vitalik Buterin further stated that these goals align well with the objectives he seeks to achieve with identity verification. Therefore, he believes that utilizing token issuance as an initial example to conduct beta testing and improvements in a hostile environment for building frameworks like identity verification/credentials makes sense.

Just last week, Vitalik Buterin discussed identity verification and digital governance in a lengthy essay, referencing the book "Radical Markets" by Glen Weyl, Co-author and Research Director of the Microsoft Research Center for Social Collaboration, and former Taiwanese Digital Minister Audrey Tang in "The Multiverse: The Future of Cooperative Technologies and Democracy." In the book, they stated:

"Many of the simplest ways to establish identity also undermine it, especially online. Passwords are often used to establish identity, but unless identity verification is carefully done, it can leak passwords more widely."

The method of identity verification endorsed by Glen Weyl and Audrey Tang in the book is cross-social identity: using an individual's entire set of behaviors and interactions to confirm identity, such as determining community membership and an individual's credibility. They stated that this method is comprehensive, recoverable, and balances privacy and security. Vitalik Buterin agrees with this approach, believing that the core issue is any single-factor identification technology is too fragile, so we should use multi-factor technology. He cited examples such as Circles, a trust-based communication on Ethereum, and Starknet's airdrop rules. He mentioned, "Many airdrop experiments underway in the Ethereum ecosystem use a combination of multiple factors to determine the credibility of accounts and member identities, granting them a universal basic income (UBI) or voting rights proportional to their scores."

Biometric Technology Has Its Limitations, Vitalik: Worldcoin Needs Improvement

In response to a comment under Vitalik Buterin's post mentioning Sam Altman's Worldcoin, he stated, "Worldcoin can handle the identity verification part, which is good, but I think it needs to add community member verification. After all, no one actually wants to distribute tokens to just anyone; people want to distribute tokens to those aligned with the community's views." Worldcoin scans human irises using biometric technology, converts iris images into hash values, and stores them in a database. As the iris is transformed into a hash value after scanning, the same iris cannot produce a second hash value, thereby preventing issues of duplicate registration and identity theft. Additionally, the company claims to delete individual iris data, retaining only the hash values.

Earlier this year, we delved into the topic of digital identity verification that Vitalik Buterin finds intriguing ("Proof of Personhood PoP Introduction | The Difficulties of Digital Identity Development"). Furthermore, Vitalik Buterin's blog quoted another passage from the book:

"Biometric technology has significant limitations in establishing and protecting identities. Linking various interactions and biometric data collected at registration to a single identifier entails a severe trade-off. On the one hand, if, like India's Aadhaar system, administrators constantly use biometric technology for identity verification, they will be able to link activities to the individual pointed to by that identifier or monitor, thereby gaining unprecedented surveillance capabilities over citizens' activities and the potential to target or disrupt identities of vulnerable groups."

"On the other hand, if, like Worldcoin, privacy is protected by solely using biometric technology to initialize accounts, the system is vulnerable to account theft or sale issues, which have had a devastating impact on related service operations... If someday, AI systems combined with advanced printing technology can simulate eyeballs, such a system may face extreme 'single point of failure' issues. In short, these two methods face either violating people's rights, especially vulnerable groups, or causing problems where accounts are initialized through biometric technology but are not actually owned by the individual."

Aside from the various solutions mentioned above, there are other projects dedicated to ensuring privacy before completing digital identity verification, such as zkMe, led by Multicoin Capital. zkMe divides identity verification into three levels: the first level is called zkPoP, which confirms the user's uniqueness and humanity, as mentioned above.

The second level, zkPoC, can be used for off-chain on-chain anti-money laundering, KYT (Know Your Transaction) checks, as well as identity document verification, age verification, and verification of political public figures/sanctions lists.

The third level can confirm whether a user is an accredited investor, which is useful in some licensed financial products. Additionally, there is zkPoL to confirm the user's location, as some countries' laws still do not allow access to blockchain networks, which is an area where this technology can thrive.