A blockchain that addresses the core issue facing humanity – its misplaced sense of identity
Recent advances in blockchain technology present an unprecedented opportunity for the advancement of the human condition – it is an opportunity which promises to deliver real freedom for the people of earth.
Third parties, from governments, banks and corporations, to lawyers, teachers and doctors, have coloured every aspect of the sovereign human experience. Blockchain technology presents the opportunity to transcend all of these; to return power over all aspects of life to conscious sovereign people.
And yet, to date, the blockchain community has not looked at what this author believes is the principal weak link in the advancing blockchain philosophies – the failure to redress the energetic source-code of our civilizational mire – humanity’s collective and individual misplaced sense of identity.
This is not just a philosophical issue, it is a very real one. It is easy to make the mistake of thinking that our systems of economics and jurisprudence lie at the heart of human society, when in fact they don’t. All legacy systems, including those concerned with economics/banking and justice (and even including some blockchain applications), rely on registered legal personalities in order to move in any manner.
It is registered legal personalities alone, not the divine right of kings of any other societal malady, which give governments the ability to enforce legislation against the people within their territory (when the event of a child’s birth is registered, the government performs a process called conversion – the changing of realty to personalty – thereby creating a separate entity, distinct from the human being). These legal birth estates, over which the creator government has jurisdiction, likewise provide that government with jurisdiction over anyone who chooses to identify themselves as such estate rather than identifying themselves as themselves – which is pretty much everyone.
A blockchain based identity management system, being undefraudable by nature, which allows every human being to create one identity and one identity alone, over which they maintain supreme executive authority as its creator, would end the never ending storm of overbearing authority which relies on this false-light system of registration and human energy harvesting overnight.
Such a system would specifically:
• Allow people to increasingly operate in the world using their own sovereign identities.
• Provide a system of identity management for many existing and planned blockchain applications that may otherwise struggle with any number of identity problems.
• End the detractor arguments against blockchain technologies which are centred around fraud, drug trafficking and money laundering whilst still offering true freedom to their users.
• Allow more blockchain applications to come together without fear of compromising anonymity – anonymity would no longer be necessary.
• Reduce the effect of overbearing legislation by ending presumed legacy jurisdiction to ‘criminal’ charges against the so-called state, where there is otherwise no injured party.
• Allow transcendence of one of the principal fallacies which has paved the way for the injustices we see in our world – the advent and development of the corporate legal personality. (That is not to say that the blockchain ought not to be utilised for corporate purposes, rather that corporate purposes, interests and activities must be subject to the men and women they are purposed to serve. And by purposed to serve we mean the broader human family not the private individuals to whom those companies distribute their profits. Likewise, whilst certain other characteristics of the modern day company (such as limited liability) may be necessary to drive innovation, others (such as the notion corporate immunity) must be transcended altogether. The men and women who act through the colour of legal personalities today ought to be accountable for their actions.
How might such a system look?
An entirely new blockchain, based on the Ethereum blockchain base code with an amendment which decouples ‘value’ from tokens altogether – every living human being is entitled to one token and only one token.
Tokens would be issued automatically by the platform to those who provide two things:
- ‘Proof of life’ (via a legitimate entry in the register of births)
- A declaration to the effect that:
(i) I accept the failure of the third party
(ii) I acknowledge the sovereignty of (wo)man
(iii) I accept the full & unlimited benefits of and liability for my actions
Potential problems
Loss of anonymity
For other blockchain applications to build the identity management system into their own offerings it would appear that there will be a loss of the anonymity typical of most blockchain undertakings. This is true. However the reasons why the anonymity aspect has hitherto been so attractive to users have principally been surrounding the capacity to release oneself from overbearing authority and its regulatory control. The alternative proposed herein likewise bypasses the same – the ‘proof of life’ basis for these sovereign identities, involves individuals creating their own new personality for operating in the world. There is no longer any attachment to the birth estates registered in legacy jurisdictions which users have formally used to identify themselves consequently the capacity for any overbearing regulatory impositions over ones person are neutralised entirely.
Additionally, removing the anonymity aspect from blockchain applications, whilst still affording users the same protections that anonymity otherwise affords, also renders moot one of the principal arguments that vested interests have hitherto used to blacken the blockchain name – i.e. that their anonymity breeds fraud, money laundering, drug trafficking and other nefarious activities.
Proof of identity
The ‘proof of life’ model proposed herein seeks to overcome the proof of identity issues which have been widely discussed by the blockchain community.
The process, for example, of birth registrations in legacy jurisdictions is simple – one parent attends a registry office to provide information relating to the birth. No witnesses are required, just one parent. What is to stop an individual from falsifying a record to create a legal personality for a child that does not exist? Very little. Whilst hospital records are also usually a part of the process, they are not compulsory. Perhaps the principal thing that such systems rely on is the threat of heavy penalties should one be caught defrauding the system.
And so it could be with the proposed system – aside from requiring video testimony from two relatives as well as a parent (or the individual themselves) – far more than any legacy jurisdiction requires – it would not be unreasonable to require a declaration as part of the registration process which users acknowledge they will be liable for a fee of $xx should they provide false or misleading information with the intent of defrauding the system. Such a caveat would be of no issue to the vast majority of people who act with integrity in their lives and relations. And if the video testimony’s being stored on the blockchain, the entire community would be able to review the records of all making the chance of fraudulent activity being spotted significantly greater. And if the fee was to go to the individual who identified the fraudulent user, then there would be great motivation for the ongoing self-policing of the system. A way of collecting such fees would have to be considered though. The additional data burden of video testimony and other measures could be solved by having some form of split control plane and data plane functionality such as implemented successfully by Blockstack.
Additionally, the proof of individuality fix proposed by the blockchain community of regular physical video conferences between random individuals could be used to ensure that the user in question is in fact ‘living’. It doesn’t however provide ‘proof of not two lives’ i.e. it does not preclude the possibility of individuals holding multiple token, something which the solution above seeks to address but which perhaps the community could come up with some better solutions to!