Proof-of-personhood: Redemocratizing permissionless cryptocurrencies - Borge, Maria; Kokoris Kogias, Eleftherios; Jovanovic, Philipp; Gasser, Linus; Gailly, Nicolas; Ford, Bryan; EuroS&PW: European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (2017 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops, 2017)
Permissionless blockchain-based cryptocurrencies commonly use proof-of-work (PoW) or proof-of-stake (PoS) to ensure their security, e.g. to prevent double spending attacks. However, both approaches have disadvantages: PoW leads to massive amounts of wasted electricity and re-centralization, whereas major stakeholders in PoS might be able to create a monopoly. In this work, we propose proof-of-personhood (PoP), a mechanism that binds physical entities to virtual identities in a way that enables accountability while preserving anonymity. Afterwards we introduce PoPCoin, a new cryptocurrency, whose consensus mechanism leverages PoP to eliminate the dis-advantages of PoW and PoS while ensuring security. PoPCoin leads to a continuously fair and democratic wealth creation process which paves the way for an experimental basic income infrastructure.
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Keywords: conference paper