Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin argues that the digital identification approach driven by Sam Altman’s World Project presents a privacy risk.
Previously known as World Coin, the World was created under the human tools of Altman and Alex Brania. The organization says it will help distinguish AI agents from humans by scanning the user’s eyes and creating unique identities on the blockchain.
In a lengthy post, Buterin noted that the world’s approach to verifying human identity using zero knowledge proofs also protects anonymity, is being investigated by various digital passports and digital ID projects. He then acknowledged using “ZK-wrapped digital IDs” that “on the surface” can “contribute to social media, voting, and all kinds of internet services being able to contribute to protecting all kinds of internet services for operations from all civils and bots without compromising privacy.
However, Buterin suggests that this approach is still summarised in a “one per person” identity system, creating significant risk.
“In the real world, pseudonyms generally require multiple accounts. So, under a per-person ID, even if you’re ZK-Wrapped, we risk approaching a world where all of your activities need to be under a single public identity,” he writes. “In a world where risk is high (such as drones), there is a significant drawback to robbing people of options to protect themselves through pseudonyms.”
As a specific example of the risk, Buterin said the US government has recently begun to require students and academic Visa applicants to publish their social media accounts. Similarly, he proposed that even if there is no public link between different accounts created under a single digital ID, “the government can reveal its own secrets and force them to see the entire activity.”
So, do you want to see someone like government, online services and others to be a real person without compromising privacy? Buterin advocates an approach that emphasizes “pluralistic identity.” With this approach, “whether it’s a person, an institution, or a platform, there’s no single dominant issuing authority.”
A multidimensional system can be “explicit” (a requesting a user to verify his identity based on testimony from an already verified user) or “implicit” (depending on a variety of different identity systems). In his view, these represent “the best and realistic solutions.”
“In my view, the ideal outcome of the ‘per-person’ identity projects that exist today would be if they merged with social graph-based identities,” concluded Buterin.
