> What would be neat now is “proof of unique living individual” in the same way.. that would solve a number of problems, related to UBI and voting.
So, there was a project called Aurora that tried to do exactly this during the financial crisis fallout in Iceland, it failed, mainly because it was way too early and the blockchain itself wasn't protected as well as Bitcoin: it was presumed that PoS could serve as a possible solution if it has a specific usecase.
Unfortunately, we didn't gain as much info and data as we could have other than then from a security standpoint deviating from BTC was not tenable.
Jack Dorsey is seeking ways to just this with Block, he did a recent talk on how UBI could work via Bitcoin's blockchain as a way to facilitate seamless txs, the biggest obstacle being that this would need to be a layer 2 or possibly layer 3 because of the ID component that ensures that this info is not retained: think zero proof knowledge protocol.
It can be done on mainchain via a derivative for incredibly low cost (100 million sats/BTC), but just like colored coins was too early this may prove tricky.
What we learned from the COVID unemployment debacle was that the payments system in the US is entirely broken and cannot function even at the best of times, much less under any strain without being subject to total collapse or perpetual grift so this needs to happen either way.
Personally speaking, I'd really wish that we can derive more data from all the UBI test runs and then have this be a major part of layer 2/3 development: for all this talk about 'Web3,' a total boomerism if I ever heard one, and the money pouring into this space I wish some of it would be spent in this space.
I'd offer to help get involved if it were the case as a former co-founder, dev and consultant in this space, if that were to happen.
