The signup process is always a sensitive part of a cryptosystem, and open network membership is not always expected (for instance, CBDCs, Ripple…). There is certainly a philosophical argument to be made against closed membership, since it can disadvantage people that struggle for access, and lets the company discriminate in the future once they get a stronghold, which can be especially problematic considering the primary value of human-uniqueness is to restrict voting to an in-group whose bounds historically have been heavily argued even in non-repressive regimes.
But it seems unlikely to become predominant. Some people have prosthetic eyes; I would be hard-pressed to imagine, say, Apple releasing an iPhone that is inaccessible to a population in such a significant way.
It could still be a cool idea, but I don’t get how this needs crypto?
This is exactly the same problem as spam detection - nobody has found a good way to prevent people from generating large numbers of fake identities, short of government identity registration. The classic "Why your solution to spam won't work"[1] checklist applies.
I expect Europeans to shun this.
I fear though that once they hit "1bn people" they will invoke the FOMO into the rest.
Over a billion humans have intestinal parasites, but that doesn't mean people are queuing up for worm eggs.
"Increase your resistance gut to parasites with our revolutionary cure!"
Or some such...
And then you realize what complete sleezy snakes most of these tech bros are.
Otherwise it wouldn't Make Money Fast.
This came up a few weeks ago on HN, with someone from a small country writing that they quit a crypto startup because they realized it was a scam. The startup was starting up an exchange, which doesn't really need a "coin". But they had to have one, so they could play games with the financial structure and Make Money Fast.
This is why there are very few real DeFi crypto exchanges. A trustless exchange, where the exchange never has custody of the money, is the way a crypto exchange ought to work. The exchange is then just a matching service - people put limit orders on a blockchain, the exchange finds ones that match, and tells both parties "go". Like the NYSE, which never owns a stock.
But there's no Make Money Fast in that. It's getting your hands on the customer assets that pays off.
Edit: Though of course if their credentials have been misused, they might be locked out of many systems. Perhaps that was what you meant?
But why do you need a coin for that? If you have centralised accounts you may as well have a centralised ledger.
On the other hand, if you decentralise account creation - let me tell about my friend, the virtual iris scanner powered by /dev/random
There is a lot of room for systems that are the silver standard and the math enables a great deal of reliability for those outside of the traditional financial systems (many people). It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough.
Each scanner is registered, authorised, tracked etc. Presumably with a private key but also I think they have the location, operator details and so on for every one.
How do they prevent fake virtual iris scanning devices from pretending that they scanned a person that doesn’t actually exist?
Or is the idea that sama is will run a centralised private identity system that aims to replace government identity management? Then why do you need crypto?
Are they trying to replace proof of stake/proof of work with “proof of being a human being”? I don’t see how the iris scanning achieves this?
I think it’s fundamentally impossible.
If you don’t have a centralised authority verifying identity, the best thing you can get is peer-to-peer federated identity verification like PGP. But with this, identity is relative, as in “I trust a guy who trusts a gal who says this person is real”.