Interoperability blockchain creator Polkadot (DOT) says one use case for the blockchains is crucial to their mass adoption.
In a new interview on macro guru Raoul Pal’s podcast, Polkadot creator Gavin Wood says proof of personhood — or a mechanism that digitally verifies a person’s humanity — could be the killer blockchain application that sparks widespread adoption.
“What I started thinking about in this context [during] Over the last few years, blockchains have only really mastered the scale of value – basically money. They have not mastered the concept of personality, it is something we rely on for almost everything in everyday life.
You go to a store to buy, I don’t know, a large piece of computer equipment [and] they make you a person before you can spend more than $1,000. You don’t notice it, but it is a necessary part of modern society, at least in the West.”
Wood further notes how widespread evidence of personhood is in Western society, but cautions that we should not rely on governments to verify who is and is not a person.
“We just do it naturally, [we] expects to see a face and so many transactions depend on that. Much of our social fabric depends on it [proof of personhood] that it must be part of blockchain before blockchain becomes a large part of society…
The question is: how do you do that without relying on things like governments telling you who someone is who isn’t? I’m not a big fan of the Worldcoin approach, I think that’s just putting too much faith in the Worldcoin device. I’m not a big fan of the KYC (know-your-customer) passport approach, I think it relies too much on governments…
I would broadly not rely on government affairs to power blockchain and this needs to be at a fairly low level before it is useful, so we need to come up with much more inventive ways to integrate personality into blockchain. ”
Generated image: Midjourney