Authors: Bohdan Andriyiv
New technologies enable creation of self-sovereign cooperation tools and services, the main of which are: self-sovereign digital identity, self-sovereign money, verifiable digital documents, end-to-end encrypted communication, humane social networking service. In this paper we describe potential implementations of self-sovereign cooperation tools and services, most importantly Self-Sovereign Base Identity, and posit a proposal to establish The United Humans organization with purpose to create and maintain the set of core self-sovereign cooperation tools and services.
TL;DR: Level of cooperation in human society is not optimal. Human Rights are not protected enough. Human psychology is abused by the markets. Sovereignty Enabling Technologies provide solutions.
Current cooperation level attained by human society is not optimal. This is especially true as we go from local to global scale of cooperation. Cooperation is mainly hindered by information asymmetry (lack of transparency) and security risks (unreliability).
Human Rights, especially a right for freedom of thought and a right for privacy are not protected enough.
Human psychology is abused by markets. This is especially true for social products - like social networking platforms.
New Sovereignty Enabling Technologies (Self-Sovereign Identity, end-to-end encryption, verifiable digital documents, DLT/Blockchain and Humane Design) make possible more transparent and reliable cooperation, better protection of human rights and well-being.
TL;DR: Base Identity – the main self-sovereign identity of a human individual. The term is used to distinguish the main digital identity of a person from other less important identities. Base Identity uses person's Real Name. Base Identity should be Humane, Self-Sovereign and Globally Unique.
Base Identity is the main digital identity of a person, through which person presents itself to the world and interacts with it. For many people Facebook account is their Base Identity. This was especially true a few years ago. Nowadays, most of the people have different (but linked) digital identities, for example Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Whatsapp, personal blog, etc. These digital identities, may be linked directly by owner by posting links from one account to another or they can be effectively linked by searching Real Name of identity owner in serch engine. Such linked digital identities (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Whatsapp, GitHub, etc), although hosted on different services can be understood as parts/compartments of one Base Identity.
Base Identity has the following characteristics:
- uses Real Name of the person it represents,
- is unique (has one-to-one relation between Base Identity and person it represents),
- is community validated,
- has at least one public interface,
- usually divided into different compartments with different functional purposes and privacy layers.
TL;DR: Base Identity should be Humane, Self-Sovereign, and Globally Unique
Current services that provide tools to create and manage parts of Base Identity (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) are not built on the principals of Humane Design. Because of market incentives (attention-based business model) to engage users as much as possible, current providers of Base Identity abuse human psychology and privacy. This abuse has detrimental effect on human psychological well-being (increased depression, anxiety, envy), cognitive abilities (decreased attention span, motivation) and social processes (fake news, echo chambers, manipulative political advertising).
If we replace attention-based business model, then we will remove incentives to engage users as much as possible, and be able to re-design these services using Humane Design.
Base Identity is the most important identity for human individual. Through this identity, people interact with the world in the most of the cases, either professional or personal. Thus, it is paramount to make Base Identity Self-Sovereign - completely controlled by its owner, and with all communication channels and data end-to-end encrypted.
One human individual can have only one Base Identity. One Base Identity can represent only one human individual.
Just as in the physical world one human individual has one identity (Real Name), in the digital world one human individual can have only one Base Identity.
Achieving the uniqueness of Base Identity per person, on a global scale, is very important. It makes possible Direct Global Cooperation between humans in the form of universal digital money (see Kudos) and digital governance through voting.
To ensure, the unique (one to one) relation between Base Identity and human person it represents, Base Identity must be community endorsed. Thus, digital identity that wants to be Base Identity must use Real Name of the person it represents (name by which person's main real-world community knows them). Currently, such endorsement is done only implicitly (friending on Facebook, connecting on LinkedIn) and confounded with other intentions (follow someone to see updates from them). We propose to make this endorsement explicit and unambiguous [see SURLHI]
Community that endorses and validates Base Identity must be open - able and willing to exchange information about Base Identity validation with other communities. Any open community, by definition, is a part of Global Human Community. Thus, effectively Base Identity is always endorsed and validated by a Global Human Community.
As Base Identity needs to be openly endorsed by community, Base Identity has to have at least one public facing interface/compartment (e.g. Twitter account). This does not mean that Base Identity cannot be used to engage in semi-public or private communications, via other more private compartments.
To ensure that community validation of Base Identity is truthful we propose to use Graph Analysis of the web of explicit endorsments from the members of Base Identity community [see SURLHI Arbitration].
Current companies that create identity management tools and services (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) are not interested to develop Humane, Self-Sovereign, and Globally Unique Base Identity. Current attention based business model, that is the business foundation of these companies, does not provide incentives to create tools to manage Base Identity.
To create Base Identity management tools we need to have new business model. In this paper, we propose to use business model based on deriving revenue from initial issuance of global digital money, issuance and distribution of which is based on the count of unique human identities (see more details below).
If it is possible to create globally unique Base Identity, then based on it we can create money and directly distribute them to people behind these Base Identities.
We propose to call such money - Kudos (KDS).
Kudos issuance and distribution logic:
- Kudos daily supply: 1 KDS per 1 living human individual. Total daily Kudos supply: 7.5B KDS per day in 2018; 11.3B KDS per day in 2118.
- Distribute total daily Kudos supply, only between Base Identities that proved to uniquely represent human individual. For example, if at a given day in 2018, 1000 identities proved that they uniquely represent humans, then these identities receive at that day ~7.5 million KDS each. Such distribution supports Kudos value, and solves chicken-egg problem of initiating Kudos distribution (common killer of "big ideas").
Kudos are first money that will be issued directly to people.
Existence of Base Identity allows creation of digital documents that can convey information about ownership. Such digital documents should be human friendly (have visual layer) and verifiable (have cryptographical layer) [see Verifiable Displays; see Validbook Statements.]
We think such verifiable digital documents may become a universal way to convey ownership over assets and liabilities.
Beside, already described tools to exchange value (money and ownership) we can have sovereign tools for communication. These tools include end-to-end encrypted instant messaging services, emails, social networking services.
There is an especially big opportunities to improve Social Networking Services (in particular Facebook), if we re-design it based on Humane Design principals. Humane re-design will fix psychological, cognitive, and democracy-related issues of the current social networking services (see discussion about this topic at Humane Tech Forum).
TL;DR: Wide adoption of Sovereignty Enabling Technologies will make human cooperation more efficient, especially on a global scale. It will improve protection of human rights and well-being.
- Effects on human cooperation -- enabling Global Direct Self-Sovereign Cooperation between people -- creating global universal digital money issued directly to people -- creating universal way to convey ownership over verifiable digital documents -- making cooperation more transparent and reliable
- Effects on protection of human rights -- better protection of privacy -- better protection of freedom of thought due to less manipulation with fake news and echo chambers
- Effects on human well-being -- more happiness (less depression, less anxiety, less loneliness) mainly due to humane re-design of social networking services
TL;DR: Proposal to establish The United Humans - an organization and a cooperation framework with purpose to create and maintain a set of core self-sovereign humane cooperation tools and services.
Self-Sovereign Base Identity enables people to cooperate directly on a global scale.
Therefore, we the people of the planet Earth, represented in the digital space by our Base Identities, can agree to use part of the initial Kudos distribution to fund The United Humans – an organization and a cooperation framework with the purpose to create and maintain a set of core cooperation tools, that will enhance human cooperation and protect human rights in the digital space.
The proposal is to use part of the future issued Kudos (10% from total Kudos issuance for the next 100 years - about 37 Trillion KDS) to fund the creation and operations of The United Humans organization. After the initial fund is spent, further financing may come from a default transaction fee when transferring Kudos via Wallet developed by The United Humans. (Wallet is one of the core cooperation services to be developed by The United Humans. People will be free to opt-out from its usage, but the usage will be incentivised by the lottery and a call to good will).
The idea for The United Humans is a continuation and the development of the idea of Validbook - a universal platform for cooperation. Please, see details of the original proposal to cooperate on the development and maintenance of Validbook here. Currently, the proposal is being updated to establish an organization of The United Humans.
If you are interested to participate in the establishment of The United Humans as a development partner, an investor or just a fellow human, please email at - [email protected]. Terms and conditions of participation for development partners, and investors to be published soon to CCG mailing list.
The implementation of the proof of the concept of the core cooperation services is available at - http://futurama1x.validbook.org/. Download and use the following key to login as the main test user “Jimbo Fry” jimbo-keystore-file. Password to keystore file - “123456789”. After login go manually to the home page. Use Chrome browser.