InkSight6: Preventing Sybil Attacks & Building Secured DAOs — an interview with Humanode’s co-founder Dato Kavazi
Dato Kavazi is the co-founder of Humanode. He is also the Director and head of strategy at Paradigm, as well as the Ex- CSO, and co-founder of Citadel. One. David graduated from MGIMO, Moscow University’s Faculty of International Relations, and has an academic background in History, Ethnology, Diplomacy, Political Science, Finances, Global Economy, Cybernetics, and Computer Science. In addition to managing a profitable private fund from 2013, Dato has headed 4 IT ventures, of which 2 have been profitable exits: il Ponte Marmi, a natural stone e-commerce platform, and Prodano, an e-commerce application.
🔺Q1: What would you say makes Humanode tick? What is the purpose?
Humanode is the first crypto-biometric network built upon the principle of one human = one node. The major purpose behind building something like this is to bring true decentralization and ultimately Sybil resistance — which is by far the major problem in decentralized networks. With enough capital or computing power, a malicious attacker can easily sabotage the whole system be it a DAO, social network, or any other decentralized network by using bots and multiple accounts. I believe using biometrics to ensure that there are no bots or multiple identities simply takes the equation of Sybil attacks out of the equation. When we talk about what makes Humanode tick? It’s the whole ecosystem — starting with the consensus mechanism of Proof of uniqueness and Proof of Existence to the private and secure biometrics technology we are using and the enthusiastic community we have built so far.
🔺Q2: How do you see Humanode’s innovative principle of “One human = One node” impacting blockchain security as a whole?
You know that the Sybil attacks have been a significant issue for centralized and decentralized systems for a long time. Basically, the whole point of blockchain is Sybil resistance through PoW or PoS. But unfortunately, when we go deep down into it, the fact is that Sybil resistance in PoW and PoS is capital based, making them plutocracies at the very core. No matter what tech is used, even if the system is decentralized, as long as the power that reins over it is concentrated or centralized, the system as a whole, inevitably is no different from being centralized, regardless of how it works or how it appears.
Using the one human = one node principle, we are trying to achieve true decentralization and real Sybil resistance. If decentralized web3 networks can ensure that every node in the network is equal and one human can accumulate only one node, creating oligopolies will be impossible, which ultimately will enhance the security of the blockchain ecosystem.
🔺Q3: How important is anonymity to Humanode? Could you elaborate on “security biometrics & liveness detection” and why it is an essential offer by your technology?
That’s quite interesting. Because if privacy and anonymity weren’t a concern, we would have had Humanode up and running quite a long time ago. I mean, without being able to guarantee those 2, it is absolutely impossible to make the system work as it should, and absolutely impossible to explain to anyone why this system will actually drastically change how things are and will be. So anonymity is of utmost importance to us.
The purpose of one human = one node isn’t to know who you are but to verify that you’re a unique, real human being and aren’t already registered on the network. To make sure that raw biometric data isn’t exposed to malicious actors, we have developed a unique combination of encryption techniques and neural networks that encrypt the biometric data before it leaves the device. You can read more in detail about how crypto-biometrics technology makes it highly unlikely to get data exposed to malicious actors.
🔺Q4: How do you see the impact on the future of DAOs in Web3 by the strategic partnership between Humanode & Ink Finance?
I believe truly autonomous and decentralized DAOs have the potential to change the way humans think about cooperation, management of collective resources, and collaboration. They present an opportunity for communities and organizations to rethink how we work together to provide more equitable participation and incentives. And this being the core essence of web3, many startups and newly built organizations are looking to adopt DAOs for governance. But there are some hurdles, one of them being the availability of huge funds to build infrastructure and the other being making DAOs secure. This partnership between Ink Finance and Humanode makes it easier for organizations to seamlessly adopt democratic DAOs.
INK Finance provides an easy way for the financial organization to set up DAOs and the partnership with Humanode helps DAOs to implement Sybil resistance at the core of any DAOs framework so that they can execute their goals and manage financial activities without needless security and credibility concerns.
🔺Q5: In the coming years, where do you see the future of Web3 security going, and what new innovations do you expect to see developing?
Security has been a cat-and-mouse game between attackers and online networks long before the advent of web3. Attackers exploit the systems by finding loopholes, organizations come up with advanced technologies to prevent or patch the loopholes, and this goes on. For web3, security is a huge challenge, especially right now, as it is still in the initial phase and builders are mostly focused on innovating instead of making it more secure. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any work going on to meet this challenge. Multiple devs are working on the security of web3 networks. I mean we at Humanode, for example, are building pseudonymous biometrics to deal with Sybil attacks which is one of the major security concerns. At the same time, we are also already focused on the next generation of crypto-biometrics that is even more decentralized and secure than any system currently in existence. It is hard to say what innovations will come to be, but in the future, I think with more people and especially countries adopting web3, security will soon become one of the main focuses in any project.
About Ink Finance
Ink Finance is a one-stop financial management toolset that empowers DAOs with governance economy, asset or credit financing, investment management, and fiscal control, integrated via a plug-and-play framework. It aims to establish a gold standard for DAO financial management that can reshape financial organizations of the Web3 era.
Learn more about Ink Finance and what we’re building:
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