Idena Concept Paper
Idena is the first human-centric system on the blockchain. Each node is associated with a unique authenticated ID and has equal power. To create a decentralized and anonymous personality, Idena conducts Turing Test simultaneously worldwide. This test is a puzzle that can only be solved by humans, not AI. This document discusses the motivation behind developing Idena. The existing identity solutions (iDaaS) in the blockchain, self-sovereign ID, and internet world have flaws in preventing Civil Attack while maintaining anonymity. The design requirements for a decentralized anonymous ID are as follows, based on the characteristics introduced by Bitcoin: 1. Verifiable online from anywhere in the world
3. Decentralized and not reliant on specific third parties
5. Privacy protection and anonymity
Current ID designs fail to achieve these requirements. Solutions like OpenID provided by Facebook and Google rely on centralized services and are not available in many countries, leading to impersonation. Government IDs rely on KYC and require sharing personal identification information (PII) with centralized services, which is the beginning of an Orwellian world. Biometric authentication relies on specific hardware sensors and algorithms, which can be forged. Moreover, these issues cannot be completely resolved in an ongoing cat-and-mouse game. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) depends on social IDs and verifiers and is unrelated to approaches like Bright ID or Proof of Personhood (PoP) in Web of Trust. - Fair voting in online communities: Governance is one of the most important elements in blockchain. DAOs, as cross-border organizations, have gained attention in the blockchain community. However, the current governance is based solely on token ownership, leading to Plutocracy where whales can collude and dominate voting results. This issue is connected to the problem of The current public blockchain mainly functions on market principles and can be solved by a protocol that achieves resistance to collusion, acquisition, and other attacks, and realizes one person, one vote. This allows the use of secondary voting and involves the crowd in the decision-making process. - Direct Marketing and Airdrop: The business models of most internet services currently collect users' personal information and monetize it. In many cases, this information is used for targeting without the users' consent. With active disclosure of personal information by users, advertisers can provide the most relevant information and enable token airdrops to users. - Serverless messenger and in-chat payments: With a network of individual nodes, it is possible to securely store a queue of P2P encrypted undelivered messages.
- Free Publishing Activities: The ID network can be used as a decentralized storage, allowing censorship-resistant publishing.
- Global Universal Basic Income: Nodes in the identity blockchain can operate on average laptops and can be rewarded for participating.
- Other SSI integration: Integration with other self-sovereign ID systems for verification. Idena has a unique technology called Proof-of-Person to prove the uniqueness of a human. There is no need to share personal information or undergo third-party certification. Idena adopts synchronous validation sessions, called "events to confirm personhood," at the same time worldwide. The flip test is a special puzzle that can be easily solved by humans but not by bots. The participation of individuals as "one human" is proven by solving the flip test conducted globally at the same time. This test has a limited submission time, preventing one person from verifying multiple accounts simultaneously. After the validation session, participants determine the schedule for the next session. As the network grows, the frequency of validation sessions decreases. The validation status of participants is not permanent and expires at the start of the next epoch. Each time, participants need to validate again by creating new flip tests.
To create a digital ID, one needs to receive an invitation code. Invitation codes can only be sent by authenticated nodes, and there is a limit to the number of invitation codes one person can issue. The core team of Idena issues invitation codes, allowing control over the network's growth.
Flips are proposed as a language-independent AI hard test called "Flip Challenge" that conveys a story. Flips use four images. To solve a flip, participants choose one of two meaningful sequences based on the two keywords provided in a general template. One of the images is intentionally distorted, making it difficult to convey a linear story. Flips are not IQ tests but tests of common sense. Flips are submitted without a correct answer. After the validation session, the network reaches consensus on the correct answer. If consensus cannot be reached, the flip is disqualified. Flips are created by validated participants. Flips are stored as encrypted data on the network before validation and then distributed by algorithms. The network reaches consensus on the flip's answer, scores its accuracy, rewards coins for each valid flip, and approves the validated identity.
There are two important exceptions to the random enforcement of flip tests:
1. Participants cannot solve flips they have created.
2. Participants cannot solve flips created by related IDs.
Before introducing "related IDs," it is necessary to understand the invitation codes in Idena. The invitation codes issued when inviting someone to the Idena network are inherited from the parent identity (the person who invited you). The genome codes prove the kinship between two IDs, and in this case, they cannot solve each other's flips. This is the genius of Proving Family Relationships with Genome Codes of Hash Values. The proof of identity for participants remains valid as long as the current epoch continues. During the epoch period, users who pass validation can invite new users, mine (mine blocks) and earn rewards, and create new flips. When the epoch deadline expires, participants need to undergo validation tests again.
Technically, ID trading is possible, but economic incentives are introduced to prevent it. Those who sell their IDs can delete the ID itself and freeze the coins they hold. When selling an ID, the seller needs to provide the secret key to the buyer. The buyer has no way to verify if the seller still has a copy of the secret key. Therefore, the seller can delete the ID after selling, and the buyer has no incentive to purchase the ID.
Idena implements a committee-based consensus with proof-of-person resistance to Civil Attack and fast finality. It plans to enable the use of native coins for P2P encrypted messages. All nodes have an equal chance to earn rewards by minting new blocks and have equal voting rights in the consensus and governance process. Validated participants can generate blocks and verify transactions on the network with equal voting rights. Randomly selected participants propose blocks and obtain consensus from a random committee on whether to include the block in the blockchain. Idena provides a secure way to run multiple parallel subchains driven by different sets of independent participants through a process called sharding. A network with millions of nodes driven by diverse people can be safely divided into thousands of groups (or shards) that process transactions simultaneously. The total reserve of coins is "36,000,000 DNA." The distribution is as follows:
- https://gyazo.com/a20a4582bbb4fc86fb34c58b6abd8a86
Idena network introduces various types of internal governance mechanisms:
- Improvement proposals for the network (Soft Fork) - Zero-ullet fund allocation proposals