A simple thought but oh so difficult to put together.
I've been considering a token for OCD in forever, one where curation would be the focus and general good activity would get rewarded. I've had plenty of ideas of how to implement that after eventually hopefully finding the right devs wanting to work on it, but it all falls short in the one aspect; verification.
You could say I could ignore that for now and still go ahead with the release of the token, front-end and its uniqueness to other tokens and see how it goes, but I don't really like doing things half-assedly as there's just that much time and I'd want to see things succeed and make an impact.
Verification has been the bane of many platforms in the past, are you doing too much verification, too little? Seems like close to no one in the web3 space has found the right mix and at this point it's probably a billion dollar solution to those who somehow manage.
We all remember voice.com, the overpaid domain by EOS's block one for a social media platform that was meant to be different. Dan L being plagued by alt accounts and sockpuppets from the early steem days wanted to make it impossible for them to exist and potentially thrive. While I haven't been able to follow its progress, I can't say it has made much hype around the space cause there have barely been any murmurs about it, or maybe I just haven't looked in the right places. I remember them also jumping on the NFT hype and wanting to center the activity around that but while enforcing KYC upon registration it seems that may have been the biggest boundary to mass adoption or maybe was it something else? Hard to say from my limited perspective and knowledge about the platform and, to be honest, the chain itself.
I still remember some old "steemians" quitting this platform cause they had been poached by voice.com people to switch and exclusively post or use that platform instead. Some of them made quite a big deal about it in a way you'd only see it as a "fuck you guys, I made it, I'm out of here" while followers of said account weren't as sure about the decision and openly warned about the dangers of KYC and how everyone is on a platform with their real names next to them and possibly real value under their names isn't just a risk but places people in a different psychological tribe. There's some freedom there that goes missing from being honest or real, even more so than how we've seen web2 become where it's always all sunshine and butterflies on their feeds while real life may not reflect the same way, oftentimes it even being impossible to. These standards we've set upon our online activities one could say are almost always fake and it's hard to find realness out there, especially on platforms where it's not so much about information but about aesthetics.
This fakeness can also exist on platforms that do offer that freedom, though, such as Hive. I don't think I'm the first to say that being aware of actions and consequences of them on this chain sure can lead down certain paths that may make you rethink how you approach certain situations and people. It's not just about the immutability of it all but also about your reputation and if you have your real name and face linked to your account it could mean a lot more potentially. For instance, if I was against something quite a lot and would want to point it out to the person or project I'd have to think twice about how this may affect me and my reputation and also how this user, if taking it in the wrong way or worst case scenario can affect my reputation and future potential.
While I love the way this ecosystem with its shared economy brings everyone together there are also some things to it that may not always be as great. Even with myself being anonymous and often trying to speak my mind about things it's not always enough that you mention that "it's just my opinion" or "based on what I know, this is what I believe about this". Cause if someone takes it the wrong way once they can ignore you or make you out to be an enemy, and hold grudges, that may come to bite you in the ass sooner or later just for having spoken your mind and sometimes without you even knowing or being made aware of it.
While I'm sure we've all experienced this in one way or scope now and then, this place sure has a ton more to offer that outweighs some of the cons that are only made possible due to all of the pros with it.
I'm going quite off-topic again so let's go back to the point of this post.
Verification.
We're now seeing a new form of it occurring through worldcoin where instead of just doing the usual KYC process of "hold up your passport and take a picture of yourself" they're instead going for our iris to scan. I personally don't have any issues with this given how they say the process operates, i.e. after the scan it deletes the picture after generating an identifier for you that you can then use as your ID.
The issue most have is that this isn't really proven yet and that the creator of this system has done some sketchy things in the past such as taking an opensource project that accepted donations private and profiting off of it. Who knows what they do with the data once they obtain it, even if the initial picture of your iris is now deleted the way data is collected is still yet to be determined once you start using their services with your new ID.
The thing that interests me the most about this is not really what the project plans on doing after the initial ID generation. I'm sure the masses are going to use it after receiving their airdrop/allocation for signing up in hopes there may be more to be had in the future, but the fact that this has early investors looking to profit does not bode well for its intentions long term. Even if there are many good intentions they are going to look to profit off of it sooner or later and I can't see how it's going to happen in a way where the user's data is protected and they are taken care of and constantly benefit from it. It will most likely be data mining of sorts being sold to advertisers and you just have to let those ads be consumed by you.
In the meantime, while this is ongoing, though, and we indeed see a big influx of registered people with this form of identification, what interests me is using that to ensure there's a 1 account 1 person system in place for a possible new front-end and token. At this point, it's just wishful thinking still.
Every day I'm hearing about new ways that worldcoin is being abused by their registration "booths" or so called "orb operators" where people are signing up those who don't care to find out much in exchange for some local currency while taking the worldcoin airdrop for themselves. Who knows how safe the ID really is in the hands of these people. There's also always been the way to cheat KYC to just have people who don't care too much about their identity and information being used to sign up multiple accounts that then one person holds and takes care of and most of the time looks out to abuse in one way or another. I remember even hearing about a game in south korea being abused this way where people would have random homeless people use their ID to sign up to then allow them to cheat.
Maybe it's still too early for this system to exist and be flawless, maybe we'll need some kind of constant verification system that already starts to sound a lot more dystopian than worldcoin but I think in the right hands and proven to not be abused it could potentially work in the near future.
The things this would open up if working and making sure no abuse occurs would be something I'm very excited about. A platform where you can ensure that each activity and person is manual and belongs to a unique user is kind of priceless. I would go deeper into what that would entail exactly but I'd probably be giving away way too many ideas I wouldn't want some worldcoin people to steal, but this post also got pretty long already.
While the intentions of worldcoin seem nice, I don't believe we're there yet where these will be executed fairly and hold their promises. Aside from all the potential shortcomings this verification still has, I'm looking forward to one of these working well and being "unhackable" in a sense where no personal information can ever be stolen and abused. As for how they'll profit off of the registered users, that's all up in the air right now but if history has taught us anything it's that it's not going to be with the users' best intentions in mind but rather the investors and founders. It does however give some more attention to the verification system that I hope will improve over time to allow those who don't have millions of funding looking to make returns to use it for better ways that truly support community and the masses without allowing abusers any leeway.
Let's see what happens, in the meantime our blockchain is immutable and until such solutions exist, we can always look back at past activity and do retrospective airdrops on those we believe were deserving and if they can prove they are one unique person later on, they'll be able to claim their drop.
Thanks for reading and apologies again for half the post going a bit off the rails, I guess my mind's a bit easily distracted at the moment.
