Verifying Unique Identities for a Basic Income Cryptocurrency
This is an idea about how a basic income cryptocurrency can be implemented in a totally distributed way. Demonstrating identity via social media can be a method of verifying uniqueness of cryptocurrency recipients potentially. This methodology may allow for the implementation of a completely decentralized basic income cryptocurrency.
This is an idea about how social media accounts and voting/consensus can be used to verify identities and totally decentralize a basic income cryptocurrency. However, setting up a nonprofit to verify identities could allow for more privacy.
There would need to be a few pieces of data submitted by users to use as signs of unique identity. Face pictures, and links to social media accounts could be used to verify the unique identities of basic income cryptocurrency recipients.
Users could be approved (or perhaps instead disapproved) by voting/consensus. There are probably multiple ways to potentially implement this.
One model would be to have each participant has a default yes vote that they give to minimally viable new users. Voting against users could be a way eliminate duplicate users. Perhaps if a user is found to be using multiple accounts, they could be barred from re-joining for some period. Perhaps users need a continued yes votes by 95% of users to keep using basic income cryptocurrencies.
If one users believes that they are abusing their voting power, perhaps users could be flagged as abusing voting power. If this happens, then the user who is abusing voting power could have the weight of their consensus votes reduced or diminished.
Verified users could flag other users as possible duplicates or non-unique identities. If enough participants flag another user as a possible duplicate, then that user could stop receiving basic income cryptocurrency distributions until they successfully demonstrate their uniqueness.
Users/participants could provide links to social media on Steemit, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Quora, SoundCloud, and/or Patreon. Users would also submit a photo of their face. This could perhaps be uploaded to Storj or Interplanetary File System. Could either Golem, Sia work too? Should pictures and social media links be stored on a blockchain?
There of course may be eventually be options for users that want more privacy, like a basic income cryptocurrency that is implemented by an organization that uses an identity verification service like provided by Jumio.
If someone uses a pseudonym or pen name on social media should they be able to participate if they are willing to provide a picture of their face? This question should be addressed and thought about.
There may be flaws in how this idea is current presented. There are many ways to potentially implement this idea/concept. This is meant to be implemented as a distributed autonomous organization (DAO). Please do feel free to respond with suggestions on how this model can be improved.
That's more or less the direction I'm headed with my own project. After thinking about this for a year+, I decided the easiest way to solve this problem is to just create an organization to validate people. Just like crypto exchanges (and many other businesses) validate people now.
One organization should issue and revoke identities to a blockchain, and the blockchain should issue 'coins' to pay for all wallet addresses bound to a current, valid identity. Use of the blockchain means approval of the organization that provides ID for it. Many such blockchains can exist.
The thing about peer validation is that it's just messy, more difficult. It's much easier to have an organization dedicated to that. That non-profit organization can publish its ID data (i.e. a list of key pairs, not people's names, etc.) to any and all blockchains willing to pay Basic Incomes.
@michaelten have you seen Circles? It's a cryptocurrency for universal basic income that's designed to address the verification issue. I just discovered it today—I have no involvement with it. Their approach to the verification problem is to:
The file linked above provides many details, and examples, and is worth a read. I may also summarize it and try to connect with the people who launched it.