BrightID: decentralized uniqueness protocol

Public Good Projects Discussion
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Project Name

BrightID

What we’ve built and why it’s a public good

Identity is a human right.

BrightID is a public good that exists for the benefit of humanity. It is a nonintrusive, decentralized, and open-source technology seeking to reform identity verification–and lay the groundwork for a free and democratic society.

By building an alternative to nation-state and biometric identities BrightID allows anyone in the world to prove they’re a unique person and own their digital identity.

How does it work?

BrightID is a social identity network that enables individuals to authenticate themselves as unique with control over a single account. We do this through the creation and analysis of a social graph by those who already know you. It requires no personal data from users other than the anonymous graph of connections.

Use cases

  • Distributing universal basic income.
  • Enabling digital democratic voting.
  • Improving polling, rating, and reviews.
  • Combating bots on social media.
  • Sharing anything equitably.

Currently, there is no equitable method to share resources with all people. BrightID empowers everyone to receive their fair share of opportunities while preventing exploitation and abuse beyond one’s rightful portion. Enabling fairness allows public goods to exist and thrive that couldn’t otherwise.

BrightID protects the access of unique individuals to public goods.

Main Funding Sources

  • $250k in grants (primarily Gitcoin QF rounds) received over 5 years.
  • $500k in 2019-2020 sale of subscriptions (streaming bulk purchases of BrightID “sponsorships”) to app builders to onboard new users. Read about sponsorships and subscriptions.

Roadmap, if funded

BrightID is a mature product, but the core team has a backlog of critical features that have been on hold due to lack of funding. We have a protocol that can scale to world scale, but we need funding.

  • Integration with the new decentralized Aura verification protocol (built by BrightDAO–the community of BrightID). Watch Adam’s EthDenver 2023 talk on Aura + BrightID.

  • “Known Identifier” protocol, built with Waku (the same tech behind Status.IM) that will greatly simplify the workload of Aura verifiers. Fighting small-scale sybil attacks with known identifiers - BrightID

  • Anonymously find which friends are using BrightID–especially which are Aura players, so someone can be verified without using BrightID meets.

  • Simplify the “sponsorship flow” of apps, so that users can pick the app to sponsor them and greatly reduce the integration work needed by new apps.

  • Make BrightID nodes output Ethereum Attestations (for on or off-chain use) to expand our reach and make no-code integration even simpler.

These milestones encompass six months of work for the core team.

Funding needed:

$100,000 to fund the six-month milestones mentioned in the previous section.

Team Info:

  • Adam Stallard - Founder. Tech lead.
  • Philip Silva - Cofounder and strategic advisor.
  • Bitsika - Outreach, docs, integrations.
  • Michael Bauer - Mobile, Smart Contract, Web Apps.
  • David Wisner - Mobile Lead.
  • Carlos Mesa - Community Manager, user onboarding.

Social Credibility

Metrics

Metrics are available at https://apps.brightid.org

  • BrightID has over 100,000 unique users.
  • 15 Apps trust BrightID for Sybil-resistance.

A visualization of the graph and more statistics are viewable from the BrightID graph explorer. Link your BrightID to see a personalized view.

Social Links

Receiving Entity

The entity receiving the funds is BrightID Main DAO, which is a 501(c)(3) sponsored Delaware LLC. Its unpaid members operate an Aragon DAO and a Gnosis safe which ensure the payment of the BrightID core team. The DAO’s constitution is online.

Contact

Adam Stallard

Do you have a commitment to open-source?

  • BrightID has been building publicly for 5 years under an ISC license.

Are you advancing values of freedom and privacy?

BrightId is a privacy-first social identity network. Names and photos are shared peer-to-peer with people you connect to. No personal information or biometrics are stored on servers.

It does not share any user information (even the BrightID identifier itself) with applications. It only shares anonymous verifications.

Are you supporting decentralization in various fields?

BrightID encourages apps to decentralize by providing smart contract templates to integrate with BrightID nodes. BrightID is an open network; we encourage apps to run their own BrightID nodes.

Eligibility Criteria:

  • Do you have a commitment to open-source (i.e. every open-source license accepted by the Open-Source Initiative) technology and sharing results publicly?
  • Have you provided transparency about how exactly funding will be used?
  • Are you advancing values of freedom and privacy (no surveillance and handling of personal data)?
  • Are you supporting decentralization in various fields (for example building Web3 projects)?
  • Have you provided social media channels to the extent that we can confirm social proof of your project?
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What’s new

BrightID received 6.5 Eth from Octant Epoch Two. (Thank you to everyone who made that happen!)

We’d like to share a progress report and updated roadmap since September.

Updates

Aura (github)–the new and improved verification method for BrightID, will eclipse “meets” verification in reliability and scalability, and is nearing a second beta launch. We’re working both on the Aura node (forked from the regular BrightID node) with special operations for evaluating subjects, players, trainers, and managers in Aura; and a much improved Aura app based on observations from our previous closed beta.

To make it easier for people to authorize Aura, we created and launched the concept of a “Super App” into the BrightID mobile app. Users can manage authorizations of apps that can go deeper in BrightID than just anonymously sharing a verification. An example of a Super App is a web3 social network that allows someone to designate their friends as BrightID connections. Aura is the first Super App, allowing people to find their BrightID connections who are also Aura players or trainers, and to evaluate their friends to help them be BrightID verified.

We’ve started to ramp up a new backend dev who can help simplify the flow of “sponsoring” so that app integrations can be much simpler. He is also evaluating the decentralized coordination method between BrightID nodes to see if we can improve it.

Roadmap

We are on track to launch Aura beta 2 in Q1 2024.

Our roadmap also includes

  • simplifying the sponsorship flow
  • integrating with Ethereum Attestations
  • launching “known identifiers” as an Aura tool
  • improving the “find friends” feature in BrightID–especially to help BrightID users find Aura players so they can become Aura verified

We want to migrate many integrated projects to Aura verification in 2024, starting with the “Votes” and “Unitap” apps.

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Thanks for the update! :slight_smile:

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  • Total Funds Received from Octant so far: 6.5 / ETH
  • Funds Spent: 0 / ETH (see below)
  • Detailed Utilization: We saved the ETH, but spent an equal value in stable coins from our treasury, so we count the grant as being fully spent. All the value was spent on our dev team which helped us achieve the milestones you see below.

Milestones and Deliverables

  • Aura Beta Launch:
    • Description: Our most meaningful achievement for BrightID in 2024 was launching the long-awaited beta refresh of the Aura frontend and the first nodes running the Aura version of BrightID. You can read more about Aura in our guide.
    • Immediate Outcome: With our incremental roll-out of Aura, BrightID Stars (meeting helpers) got to use the new version, give us valuable feedback, and prepare to evolve their verification methods to fit this improved method for BrightID.
    • Future Implication: Read our “Plans” section below to learn why BrightID Star hosted “meets” are deprecated and how the new system of “Aura Players” aligns more closely with the long-term vision of BrightID of proving uniqueness through people who already know you.
    • Funding Used: $10,000 (plus other funding sources)
  • Improved Sponsoring Flow:
    • Description: This major improvement to BrightID core was planned for two years. The most difficult integration point for apps used to be authorizing user “sponsorships”. Previously, apps had to make an API call to a BrightID node for each authorized user. The new flow moved everything to the user’s client (BrightID mobile app) except buying and assigning SP (sponsorship tokens). This means integration can be done codelessly and just requires generating a URL or QR code, which the BrightID SDK can do. The user flow was also reduced by one step since users no longer have to wait for authorization from the app. This also reduced the chance of network errors.
    • Immediate Outcome: Unitap and Orange Protocol switched to the new sponsorship flow. New apps were able to evaluate BrightID more easily. All users now have an easier experience linking apps with fewer steps and less chance of error.
    • Funding Used: $3000
  • Karma GAP: BrightID on KarmaGAP

Outcomes

2024

  • BrightID growth: The number of verified BrightID users grew from 72,000 to 80,000.
  • Aura User Interviews: In November and the first week of December, we conducted 15 interviews with BrightID power users on the new Aura verification platform resulting in 10 issues created in our Linear issue tracking system, 4 of which have already been resolved and deployed.

Plans for Potential Funds Raised in the Next Octant Allocation Window

The first three goals are carrying over, and the last three are new.

  • Ethereum Attestations:

    • Description: Support DIDs and Ethereum Attestations as a verification format from BrightID nodes.
    • Expected Outcome: BrightID verifications will be more portable, attracting more adoption from apps. Of the next 10 apps integrating with BrightID in the first half of 2025, two will use Ethereum Attestations.
    • Funding Needed: $ 10,000

  • Find an Aura player feature:

    • Description: The steps needed to become BrightID verified are changing. The most important step will now be to locate Aura players that you already know so they can complete the verification process on your behalf. This is in contrast to the current system of zoom meetings with hosts that don’t already know participants. The new system using Aura is more in line with BrightID’s original vision of being verified by people that already know you.
      The best way to find an Aura player will often be by searching through your friends lists (phone, apps, social). Aura players can label themselves as such to allow such searches without revealing any identifiers to anyone that doesn’t already know them. We already have a “find friends” feature, but it has usability issues and needs an overhaul to support finding Aura players.
    • Expected Outcome: When combined with “Known Identifiers,” increase the number of Aura-verified individuals from 1,000 to 1,000,000.
    • Funding Needed: $ 10,000

  • Known Identifiers Tool for Aura:

    • Description: This uses existing private knowledge of social accounts to greatly reduce the workload of Aura players and provide more accurate results. We have wanted to build this since 2022, but have lacked the funding to accomplish it. Here’s the original blog post that outlines how it will work.
    • Expected Outcome: When combined with the “Find an Aura player feature,” increase the number of Aura-verified individuals from 1,000 to 1,000,000.
    • Funding Needed: $ 50,000

  • Updated Aura Achievements

    • Description: BrightID users need to see and understand their Aura verification level and which apps they qualify for.
    • Expected Outcome: Double the number of users linking to apps needing Aura verification.
    • Funding Needed: $ 10,000

  • Aura Graph Explorer

  • Improve Aura based on feedback

    • Description: After opening Aura to beta testers, we’re finding bugs to squash and opportunities to make the interface better. We need funding to continue to improve Aura based on user feedback.
    • Expected Outcome: Happier Aura players = greater retention
    • Funding Needed: $ 20,000

Other Funding

  • Grant Funding Received in 2024:
    • Optimism retro PGF: $200,000
    • Gitcoin grants (3 rounds): $50,000
  • Other Non-Grant Funding Sources: Gitcoin bought $3000 in BrightID sponsorships this year, paid in GTC, which is enough to sponsor 75,000 new users at the current price.

Future Plans for Financial Sustainability

Any project that creates revenue and buys Sponsorship tokens helps the long-term sustainability of BrightID. We just need one project to reach escape velocity and bring BrightID along with it. Aura can be a paid service; if it can produce a set of verifications that apps find useful, it can charge for that service and pass along funds to BrightID by purchasing the corresponding Sponsorships.