Original title: V God praises the airdrop revolution: fascinating applications of blockchain identity verification, Worldcoin and four major challenges
Original author: Zhang joy, BlockTempo
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has recently been interacting with netizens on the social platform X very frequently, especially expressing his views on the DeFi track. Yesterday (29), Vitalik once again took the topic of airdrops that are well known to people in the cryptocurrency circle as a topic to discuss the relationship between Airdrop and blockchain identity proof, and praised airdrops as a fascinating example of identity authentication.
Airdrops are a fascinating example of identity verification
Vitalik first stated in the tweet that the airdrop is a fascinating example of zero-knowledge proof (ZK), blockchain identity proof:
“The airdrop is a fascinating example of a zero-knowledge proof, blockchain-based identity, credential, and proof framework. The goals of the airdrop are:
Paper hands (the opposite of diamond hands) that are distributed to community members rather than sold immediately;
Reward contributions to the project;
Pursue equality (but accept some differences);
Fight against meaningless bonus tasks.
These also happen to be the goals that identity is ideally meant to achieve. Therefore, it makes sense for anyone building an identity or credentialing framework to do a token distribution as an initial use case to beta test and improve the project in a hostile environment.”
Discounted sales can also be seen as a form of token distribution
In addition, Vitalik added that airdrops are not the only meaningful form of token distribution. For project owners, they can also sell tokens at a discount:
“A key point is that giving away tokens for free isn’t the only way it makes sense, you can also sell them at a discount.
Depending on how much you contribute, you can buy a corresponding amount of bulk at a discount, which helps to make the supply of tokens more decentralized and reward those who contribute, while also ensuring that there are real buyers involved.”
Worldcoin still needs improvement
Regarding the airdrop and identity verification mentioned by Vitalik, some community members immediately thought of Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project supported by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. V God also responded positively:
“Worldcoin handles the identity part, which is great, but I think it also needs to add authentication of community members. After all, no one actually wants to distribute tokens to other people. People want people who agree with the community to hold these tokens.”
Last year, Vitalik expressed his doubts about the actual operation of Worldcoin, believing that the existing solutions still cannot prevent the privacy leakage that may be caused by Orb hardware devices:
“Broader thinking around biometrics and proof-of-person protocols is a good direction, but risks include inevitable privacy breaches, further reductions in the right to browse the web anonymously, potential for government coercion, and the practicalities of maintaining decentralization while still being secure.”
Overall, he lists four main risks:
Privacy. Registration of iris scans may reveal information.
Scaling barriers. Unless there are enough devices that are easily accessible to anyone in the world, the world ID will not be reliably accessible.
Centralization. The Orb is a hardware device and we cannot verify that it is constructed correctly and has no backdoors. There are also risks associated with the centralization of the Worldcoin Foundation.
Security. Your phone could be hacked and you could be forced to scan your iris while showing a public key belonging to someone else.
What does Vitalik Buterin think is a good way to authenticate your identity?
Last week, Vitalik Buterin mentioned a method of identity authentication, namely cross-social identity, in a 10,000-word article titled Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell.
The book states:
“Many of the simplest ways to establish identity also break it, especially online. Passwords are often used to establish identity, but unless they are carefully authenticated, they can be compromised more broadly.
Using a person’s entire set of behaviors and interactions to confirm identity, such as determining community membership and a person’s trustworthiness, is comprehensive, responsive, private, and secure.”
Vitalik Buterin also agrees with this. He believes that the core problem is that any single-factor identification technology is too fragile, so we should use multi-factor technology:
“Many of the airdrop attempts underway in the Ethereum ecosystem use a combination of factors to determine an account’s trustworthiness and membership, and grant it a UBI or voting rights proportional to that score.”
