A Bright Idea for a Better Internet

The Digital Age

Seemingly by the day, our identity in the digital world is becoming ever more integrated. Our news, relationships, social life, banking, shopping, and nearly every facet of life are increasingly intertwined with social networks, applications, and online platforms.

The entire planet is co-creating a massive live action experiment into how we integrate our tangible physical lives into an interconnected, digital world.

The impact and speed of progress is astounding. People from around the world are connecting like never before. Social media is bringing together people from even the most remote and culturally diverse areas on the planet. Information is becoming exponentially more accessible.

And yet, we are also entering into an age of fake news where all information is questioned. One of deep fake technology where the legitimacy of video and voice recordings are becoming ever more uncertain. A digital space rampant with fake accounts and bots spamming networks to manipulate public opinion or prey on sensitive data. An age of massive privacy breaches and centralized data held by autonomous corporate giants.

Amidst it all, trust evaporates, information becomes relative, and individual identity is blurred between elements of total anonymity and total loss of privacy.

Is this the price we have to pay for an interconnected, digital world? Shouldn’t this technology be easing the burdens on humanity and not creating more?

Undoubtedly, the digital age has and continues to bring many extraordinary benefits to humanity. Yet, this is an innovation still in its infancy. In 1995, no-one would have dreamed how the online landscape would have evolved by 2005 let alone where we are today. Just in the same way, it’s impossible to foretell exactly how the digital innovations of even the near future will unfold.

What is certain though is that this is a young and imperfect time in a new technological frontier. Much of the critical functions and tools for a prosperous and useful internet and digital world are yet to be implemented or discovered. However, without these innovations and solutions, the aforementioned problems will only continue to perpetuate in an already fragile and fragmented digital space.

Innovation is the Birth of Necessity

The year was 2015 and the idea was simple enough: To create a currency where the new value created was distributed equally to everyone on the planet. To essentially create a currency based on the principles of universal basic income. As bold and farfetched as it seemed, the idea was quickly becoming ever more feasible and the public perception towards the idea was taking shape.

There were just two major technical hurdles. First, a way to create a new currency and distribute it efficiently on a global scale. Second, to ensure every human being received an equal amount and that no-one could “cheat” the system and create multiple accounts to multiply the amount they would receive.

With the emergence of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, a new wave of possibilities was unfolding.

Currency could be managed and created in a transparent, democratic, and decentralized manner. While still somewhat clunky and early in its development, it was quite plausible that in time it would reconcile the first major hurdle in the way. What was left was to simply ensure each person only had one account.

It was with this in mind we created what would become the Manna currency in 2015 and subsequently launched Mannabase.com in 2017. We created a straightforward sign up form using geolocation, IP detection, phone & email verification, and an array of other methodologies to ensure each user would be unique. From there, every verified Mannabase user would receive their weekly Manna. They could spend it, save it, or sell it on exchanges.

Simultaneously, a project called SwiftDemand was working on something similar. The exact economics were slightly different, but the overarching concept was the same. The website would distribute “swifts” to each verified unique user on a regular basis then let that community of users determine what that value should be worth through a global marketplace.

For both efforts, the inherent value of the weekly distributions was relatively small. As nascent projects, the value was still being discovered and seemingly far too little for any hacker or malicious actor to pay much attention. Or so we thought!

Both SwiftDemand and Mannabase grew incredibly fast. There was undoubtedly a spectacular demand and interest in our shared missions that was resonating with many people. As the number of users began to explode, so did concerning trends of obvious fake accounts and abuse. It quickly became apparent that only with highly advanced and expensive verification using government IDs, biometrics, and more could there be any prevention of massive abuse.

We scoured for solutions and overtime became aware that as of yet, there was no cost-effective scalable solution for proving uniqueness in an online network. During this time, it felt as if we had come upon a technological roadblock we might not overcome and began to question the long term viability of Manna or other similar ubi principled endeavors. Fortunately, it was this very same revelation that inspired SwiftDemand’s co-founder, Adam Stallard, to seek to fix this critical issue.

Thus began the unique identity solution BrightID.

While there had been prior conversations and dialogue amongst the projects in online chats and email, it was in spring of 2019 that finally connected the Mannabase team to Adam Stallard of BrightID and SwiftDemand.

We were attending a pitch day at Draper University, hosted by the eccentric Bitcoin investor Tim Draper, who had become an early silicon valley evangelist for digital currencies. After a long day of pitches, Draper led jumping jacks, and intermingling with the startup focused student body, we all sat down for dinner and began exploring how our projects could work more closely together towards our shared missions.

It was in that meeting that the vision for Hedge for Humanity was born:

An umbrella nonprofit that would support the development of various technologies and projects all aiming to help make worldwide basic income and value distribution possible.

Over the coming months, the non-profit managing Manna was renamed to H4H. BrightID had already taken the steps to become a functional DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization. In order to maintain its sovereignty and distributed governance, BrightID maintained the DAO and made H4H the sole member of its LAO, the legal LLC, that wraps it.

Once BrightID had gained enough traction and funding to build and maintain the software, excess profits would be donated to H4H and ultimately distributed back out to all BrightID users as a shared global dividend. If need be, the BrightID DAO would have the ability to disconnect from H4H if the mission or direction of the non-profit were to sway too far off course or in opposition to that of BrightID.

An Even Brighter Idea than Intended

It is often said innovation is the birth of necessity. What is commonly overlooked is how much innovation for one necessity inadvertently solves an array of unrelated or seemingly unconnected problems. In this same way, what began as a solution to the problem of proving uniqueness for global basic income initiatives, quickly elucidated the need for the same solution for an array of other problematic flaws or failures in online digital identity. In solving one problem, many other problems can also be solved and this is undoubtedly the case with BrightId. As the BrightID project has grown, so have many new opportunities and potential use cases.

Perhaps because it has always been this way, the world has accepted a large degree of manipulation, spamming, and abuse on the internet.

It has seemed like a necessary trade off for the anonymity and freedom of information the world wide web provides. Yet, as time goes on, these problems are only proliferating and becoming ever more problematic.

Facebook now owns over 4 terabytes of user data, and the tech giants have completely dismantled personal privacy. Meanwhile, malicious actors are creating fake accounts aimed to create social and political unrest on social media giants like Facebook and Twitter. Chat programs like Telegram, Discord, and Slack are bombarded by fake accounts aiming to phish user information or scam them out of money. These and so many other problems could be reduced or even eliminated with an effective one-user/ one-account protocol such as BrightID.

How Does it Work?

So how does BrightID provide such a solution without requiring personal data, identity cards, and more? The brilliance of BrightID lies in its step back from the pure digital dependence of personal data like much of the online world. Instead, it relies on something deeply human: that of real, personal connections.

BrightId uses a web of trust methodology that essentially relies on users vouching for one another’s realness. Vouching occurs through the simple process of connecting with another user in the BrightID app. Using an array of complex and ever growing algorithms, duplicate accounts are removed and users associated with them penalized.

Depending on the organization or product that is integrating BrightID, they may choose to have a higher probability score of uniqueness. This would require the user to increase their connections with other reputable BrightID accounts in order to achieve various degrees of mathematical certainty.

Where is BrightID Today

Though still in it’s Beta stage, the BrightID app is now available on Google Play and the Apple Store. Projects such as Gitcoin.co, 1Hive, CLR.fund, and Hedge for Humanity, are working on integrations utilizing BrightID to solve problems requiring a viable one user/ one account solution.

Soon, the H4H supported initiative, Borderless Basic Income, will be launching. It will be giving away $100/month for a year to random individuals from around the world. The only requirement to sign up is to have a verified unique BrightID. As more companies and projects seek to integrate BrightID into their systems, more unique opportunities and perks like BBI will arise for its users.

If you are interested in signing up for a BrightID or learning more, we encourage you to visit their website and do so today.

If you would like to support BrightID before October 2nd, there is currently a unique fundraising opportunity with Gitcoin.co in which your donation will be substantially multiplied and used by the BrightID DAO to continue to fund development. A $1 donation can be matched 200x thanks to the magic of quadratic matching!

https://gitcoin.co/grants/191/brightid-universal-proof-of-uniqueness