Building a Secure, Private, & Trusted Digital Identity Amid Decentralization | Terence K - Humanity

[Music] ladies and Gentlemen please welcome to the stage Terren qua hi hello um so uh my name is Terence qua I'm the founder of humanity protocol uh we're a relatively newer project we started uh around a year and a half ago uh launched our test net back in October uh have signed on around 4 million people for dids uh and today I'm just talking about why digital identity is important uh especially in the age of artificial intelligence so I think you know when when it comes to dig digital identity and decentralized identity it's probably one of the key use cases that people have been talking about since 2017 since the Ico days uh nobody's really been able to successfully execute on it um I think everybody even in this cycle everybody's just focused on mem coins uh people sort of forget about some of the bigger ideas and bigger use cases for uh for blockchain um but that's what we're here to try and solve um if we look at you know some some of some of the problems that we're experiencing uh right now with you know Bots with scams um with fr online I think one of the biggest problems as we as as artificial intelligence becomes more and more advanced um is really the inability for us to differentiate what is a human being uh and what is not right you look at voice right now with 11 Labs you can generate any any voice you want and it's it's it's pretty much impossible to tell you look at Deep fake videos I think very soon uh not distinguishable from uh from the real thing content right now already you look at Twitter you look at social media um most of the stuff is already being generated by uh by by chpt or deep seek um so I think one of the key things for us in terms of building trust is really uh being able to differentiate what is a human being online and what is not um I think it's the use cases are not just in the web 3 world but also even in web 2 when you think about sort of online advertising how advertising to AI agents or Bots probably is not as valuable at least for now to uh to advertis to humans right and so what we're doing with uh oh so what we're doing with Humanity protocol is we're building an identity focus blockchain and the way we think about it is that we want to bring a lot of different attributes uh about a human uh onchain so that you know applications building on Humanity or other blockchains that we're connected with can leverage these credentials to be able to verify various things to start you know the very first attribute that we're verifying is whether you're a human being or not um um and then down the road to potentially your education uh where you work your medical records many different things in a privacy preserving way um and the way we are doing the very first attribute uh for proof of humanity we're leveraging uh we're leveraging Biometrics so there is a a a little bit similar to what worldcoin is doing with uh with the orbs um but instead of using something that's we consider to be pretty intrusive um we're actually leveraging uh the Palm so you know in the US Amazon's already using palm prints for for payments um in China 10 cents using it for payments what we've actually done was uh we developed over the last couple years uh proprietary hardware and software for palm recognition so you know everybody's Palm there there are two components to it there's the the palm print which is the surface level patterns and creases um of your hand and then there's also the Palm veins which is you know sort of the blood vessels that are under underneath your uh underneath your skin and so leveraging proprietary hardware and software we essentially able to recognize just with the pal patterns every one of the 8 billion people in the world okay and so without having to actually scan your eyeball or scan your face um we can actually do proof of personhood directly just with uh with PM based Biometrics um I'm going to move on yeah so all right just now this uh yeah so you can see like some of some of these uh devices uh we've actually started rolling them out globally in uh in various popups uh there are a couple devices at our booth um it's actually next to the ICP Booth so for those of you who want to try it out you can absolutely go uh and onboard to test that um and then over over the next couple months we're setting up a bunch of operators stations um to implement these around the world uh and I think one of the key things that is also special about using Palm based Biometrics instead of your iris or your face or whatnot is it actually opens up a lot of different possibilities in terms of real world and offline use cases where we can abstract away the uh the blockchain component what I mean by that is you know we uh we actually also already started installing some of these devices in hospitals uh in Hong Kong where it essentially serves as access control for doctors um we are implementing different integration so that this potentially could become the uh the a payment app uh where you can just scan your hand and you can pay with crypto um for ticketing again you know tying it into a Luma event or a QR code so that directly just using your pal you can actually access uh events um yeah and so the way we we we think about it is that ultimately when it comes to digital identity it needs to be privacy preserving what I mean by that is when you are accessing uh applications online whether it's you know in the defi world or you know now there's tokenization rwa platforms etc etc a lot of these platforms are asking you to do a full kyc where you're submitting your passport your address proofs etc etc all that sort of stuff I think to a large extent what we're trying to do is say you know what we want to create reusable credentials directly on chain so that you don't have to go do that all you know multiple times a day uh and more importantly you're only sharing uh the information that is necessary so for example uh a defi protocol uh might actually just want to make sure you're not sanctioned um or you know an rwa platform wants to issue tokenized T bills and so they actually kind of just want to know that you're an accredited investor with a high enough net worth so you don't actually have to reveal everything else um to to the platform yeah yeah and I think you know one of the interesting things that differentiates us between between um between Humanity protocol and other uh sort of identity projects or uh decentralized ID projects in the space is uh is the is how we actually leverage something we call identity validators and uh I think historically you look at identity it's either heavily centralized uh controlled by web2 companies controlled by big conglomerates they own all the data you have no control over it or there are essentially identity projects start are very focused on making everything completely decentralized completely open permissionless um I think in order for there to actually be adoption there needs to be a healthy balance and so what we're actually doing is we're creating this role called identity validators on Humanity protocol and how it works is essentially uh different sort of entities would be able to verify things about you and all that data would never be placed on chain the credential would be placed on chain so for example right now if I you know and it's happened to me multiple times already you know people reaching out to me uh on LinkedIn saying that they work for this company or they went to school or you know uh people reaching out to me on telegram pretending to be somebody um it what we're doing is essentially creating infrastructure and creating a network so that different identity validators can come on board and verify things you know for example we we we are striking Partnerships with universities to issue all their student transcripts and graduation records um directly onto Humanity so that you could easily share it to your new employer or to your to your new employer or to your grad school where you actually did your undergrad right or even employment records the idea is that have a company say you know these are all the people that have worked for me in the past these are my current employees and so when this person actually needs to find a new job your the new employer doesn't have to call up the company uh get HR produce records and do all sorts of stuff um same with sort of compensation records um and down the road the whole idea for us is to uh is to make this uh essentially a a blockchain where any identity validator that wants to prove anything can come on board allowing applications whether on Humanity or other blockchains to be able to leverage these credentials um yeah and I think you know and even just in in the realm of you know web 3 I think proof of personhood along with credentialing uh is going to be super important I think historically in in the last couple years people have been thinking that um blockchain needs more adoption uh well all of us think that blockchain needs more adoption but I think people think that the hindrance to that has historically been you know expensive transaction fees or expensive transaction fees or uh or you know not fast enough tps's the way we actually think about this is that in a world where blockchains actually have a lot of adoption the fact that the fact that blockchain all blockchains are permissionless and anybody can create as many blockchain addresses and accounts as they want it's actually going to wreck havoc in the sense that it doesn't really matter what your TPS is if there are Financial incentives or rewards people are going to bought the out of it anyways so the way we actually think about it is that there needs to be some sort of credential link so that there could be potentially prioritized transactions or there could even be permission transactions in the sense that for us what we're trying to do is say okay you know what maybe there are adaps that only allow for human beings to uh to to to use or there might even be uh be Dows that's say you know what it's gated by people it's gated by people that have University degrees so the way we look at this is that having credentialing on on chain opens up a wide range of use cases that probably a lot of us have not thought thought thought about and if there are there is actual adoption wider adoption of uh of blockchain applications is heavily needed um yeah so as I as I mentioned earlier um you know we've launched our test net uh the testnet you can scan the QR code uh and join it it's uh test net. humanity.org uh We've signed up I think just today we're going to be Crossing 4 million people around the world um and what we're trying to do is uh start with proof of humanity and then add on many different sorts of credentials uh into Humanity so that you know we have an onchain environment where we can trust um and you know hopefully reduce scams hacks issues um and you know that's that's that's us uh QR code did not sorry the it's not working the QR code's not working well my guy here uh I need to find a new head of marketing though um so if if that's not working it's uh it's just test net. humanity.org and uh and we've actually created a pretty Innovative system to gamify this um that's how we kind of organically got a good couple million people signing up so if you go and you sign up uh you can obviously use a noncustodial wallet or we actually use weboth to to create sort of social logins you know a simple onboarding process for people um if you sign up it will ask you for a referrer um and the referrer you can use is is just T single letter t uh and what we've done was like we actually gamified it so we actually got a lot of people to refer their friends um obviously an anticipation for potential rewards airdrops etc etc um I think one thing that we also didn't have on this uh on this uh on the slides um is we're actually be launching a product our very first product uh targeted at the web 3 Industry very soon it's called Fair drops so faird drops.

com uh and we're starting to uh to partner with projects started launching tokens uh over the coming months uh to help them verify and and and to help them verify that you know people are are actually claiming their airdrops are not Farmers or or civils um so I think that's that's probably it for me I I still still have a good couple minutes um in case anybody has questions comments you know feel free to ask uh but otherwise I think you know I'm I'm probably ahead of time yeah um so we are uh we're in evo2 uh we are actually heavily modifying the uh the arbitrum orbit stack um and the the reason I think a lot of the identity projects are positioning themselves as sort of either an oracle or or or a sort of a an application layer but we decided to actually have our own chain uh for a couple reasons number one uh is we we sort of want a home for the credentials and for us to be able to natively uh transact on there and then the other thing is you know working with sort of cross Chain Solutions layer zero and direct Integrations on other blockchains the whole idea is that a single human ID will actually allow you to incorporate multiple different types of addresses potentially even you know an svm address or any other blockchain so that these these these credentials can also be used on applications built on other chains um so you know maybe there's there's a better version of pump. fun that actually says you know what every human can only buy up to x% of the initial Supply when the token launches right so so there are a lot of these use cases that you know we haven't explored yet um but I think we'll be will be very interesting yeah yeah so the the way the uh the identity validators work is that we actually don't store the information so if Harvard wants to say that Harvard as an identity validator wants to say that you went to Harvard Harvard is keeping whatever information they have and they're issuing credential on chain okay so there's that when it comes to the Biometrics piece um we are technically the uh the foundation is technically the identity validator for that and the way it works is that we are actually not storing any sort of raw data we're taking uh the patterns turning into a Bome biometric signature and then comparing the hashes no more questions awesome uh well thanks a lot for having me guys uh hope you guys have fun in Denver