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.
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Integration with the new decentralized Aura verification protocol (built by BrightDAO–the community of BrightID). Watch Adam’s EthDenver 2023 talk on Aura + BrightID.
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“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
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Anonymously find which friends are using BrightID–especially which are Aura players, so someone can be verified without using BrightID meets.
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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.
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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
- BrightID was the first verification used by Gitcoin Grants, and helped develop the “trust bonus” which became Gitcoin passport.
- BrightID is the only Sybil-resistant attestation used by CLR.fund for its MACI protected Quadratic voting.
- BrightID was exemplified as a Proof of Personhood solution in Vitalik’s article: Moving beyond coin voting governance.
- Green Pill Podcast BrightID with Adam Stallard | Green Pill #35 - GreenPill | Podcast on Spotify
- Bankless Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3DbMFYGRoM
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
- @adamstallard on discord
- castall on keybase
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?
