identifi

The P2P Identity and Reputation Database

Martti Malmi 2013

Vision

  • Ubiquitous identification and reputation
    • Get benefits everywhere for being a good guy
    • Get ostracized everywhere for antisocial behavior
    • Huge incentive to not be a butthead
  • Decentralization of justice
    • Enables competing judges and investigators
    • Everyone can choose whose judgement to trust
  • Non-violent justice
    • Ostracism is cost-effective
    • Encourages compensation over punishment
  • Economic benefit
    • Reduces risk of trade or loan, thus reducing price

Mission

  • Collect identifiers from everyone on the planet
    • Email address
    • Photograph
    • Birthdate
    • ...
  • Connect the identifiers with different relations :
    • A and B belong to same person
    • B successfully traded with C
    • C stole from D
    • ...
  • Evaluate data
    • More weight on relations created by friends
    • ...

Identifiers

  • Anyone can add
  • Unique or non-unique
  • Data model:
    • Type
      • Name
      • Facebook ID
      • Phone number
      • Address
      • Public cryptographic key
      • Fingerprint
      • Company ID
      • Create new types at will
    • Value

Relations

  • Links between identifiers
  • Anyone can create
  • Digitally signed by creator and people who approve
  • Data model:
    • Type
    • Related IDs
    • Value
    • Timestamp
    • Signatures

More relation types

  • Facebook friendship
  • Facebook relationship status
  • A's Reddit account is B
  • C works for D
  • C no longer works for D
  • E's judgement of a dispute between F and G
  • Public contract between H and I
  • Create new types at will

Evaluating

  • Evaluate credibility of relations
    • Various algorithms to counter spam and fakes
  • User chooses how to evaluate
    • Relation creator's position in your social network
    • Relation creator's reputation
    • Other relations by the same creator
    • Show or hide anonymous gossip
  • Nodes can drop untrusted relations if disk space low

Visualization


Strategy

  • P2P distributed data storage
    • Avoids social and political pressure
    • Freenet? DHT?
  • Most users use via 3rd party web services
  • Web services can run their own nodes
  • Crawl data from existing sources
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • eBay
    • Public records
    • ...

Use case: Lend money

  1. Take a photo of an unknown person in a pub
  2. Search by photo on Identifi
  3. Find out the person's name and other details
  4. View person's connections to your social network
  5. View person's reputation, eBay style
  6. Decide if you want to lend him 20 € for beer
  7. Write a review later

UI Example


Augmented reality with Google Glass

Use case: Fighting crime

  1. Capture thieves face on surveillance cam and search
  2. Get witnesses and file a report on Identifi
  3. Thief gets ostracized
  4. Thief can't get apartment, job, insurance or GF
  5. Thief incentivized to apologize and compensate
  • ...or defend himself from false accusations
  • Trusted entity can investigate disputes and judge


    • Cost-effective
      • Way cheaper and easier than going to court
      • Cheaper and less harmful than jail
      • Ostracism works
      • Compensation over punishment

    Changing the society

    • Politicians likely to get negative feedback
      • Discourages participation in politics
    • Incentivize public servants with reputation
      • Social reward for good service
      • At last, responsibility for bad service...
    • Discourage from enforcing unjust and unpopular laws
      • Victimless crime
      • Intellectual property laws
      • Self-defense laws
    • Global village community, everyone knows each other
      • Secure your future with karma, not just money
      • Gift economy, charity

    identifi

    By mmalmi