Discussing Sybil resistance with Upala founder Petr Porobov

Petr Porobov is an entrepreneur and programmer who has been involved in continuous entrepreneurship in the fields of 3D printing, art, and drones before founding Upala. Petr has long been thinking about topics related to government power and social structure. With the grand vision of promoting world peace, he founded Upala.

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Introduction

This podcast invited Petr Porobov to talk about the original intention of founding Upala and what problems Upala is solving. From decentralizing government power to digital identity verification, Petr talked about his understanding of building a digital identity system and the current development progress of the project. After reading this article, I believe you will have a deeper understanding of the topic of witch resistance.

Guest#

Petr Porobov is an entrepreneur and programmer who has been involved in continuous entrepreneurship in the fields of 3D printing, art, and drones before founding Upala. Petr has long been thinking about topics related to government power and social structure. With the grand vision of promoting world peace, he founded Upala.

Podcast Date｜August 16, 2022
Bounty｜$141
Class Representative｜Octopus
Review｜zhoumo
Typesetting｜豚

🗣️ What is Upala#

Upala is a collection of various verification systems, a protocol for resisting witch attacks, and it scores digital identities, which are priced in US dollars. It verifies digital identities in the form of scores. It uses a unique architecture composed of groups, which can be formed by anyone, including friends, work communities, DAO members, and so on. Users can apply to become members of different groups, and each member is assigned a score by the group. The score is determined by the dynamic market and is represented in stablecoin form in Upala. If a member in the group wants to remove their identity, professionally known as liquidation, they can exchange it for the same amount as the identity. The liquidation process also provides better statistical data for this system. Upala is currently exploring applications mainly in Dapps and organizations like Gitcoin, where users can choose score providers they trust and set an Upala score. Users with scores higher than the threshold will receive additional benefits. Upala also provides more interoperable solutions for cross-chain identity verification, aiming to establish a brand-new digital identity system in the crypto-economic system. In Petr's view, the concept of forge price and this system in Upala are more effective than traditional identity verification systems (passports).

🗣️ The Reason for Creating Upala#

Petr believes that ordinary people also have the power to resist the government, and through collaboration, they can create a system that avoids the government. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have broken the government's monopoly on currency, and Upala attempts to break the government's monopoly in another area—identity. If a truly decentralized digital identity is to be created, there must be an alternative to government IDs, which inevitably requires discussing "witch attacks." Upala was founded to eliminate witch attacks and constantly fight against various robots to maintain true digital identities. Upala is a Sanskrit word that means gem, specifically referring to opal. A gem is a beautiful stone with a complex structure, just like human society. Upala hopes to make efforts to build a more humane human society.

🗣️ Discussion on Human Society#

Petr believes that there is no evil in human society. All "evil" comes from our inability to properly coordinate the relationship between individuals and society. The systems we create are meant to solve human problems—maintaining health, feeling safe, and eliminating evil. But now the institutions have become the source of all evil. Institutions specifically refer to corporations and governments. The interaction in human society is very simple, and people can easily unite on an interesting topic, such as certain games, books, movies, etc. Coordinating open-source projects is easy. Many organizations are becoming more flat. But unifying this part is difficult. Especially when this problem involves power and money. When we communicate with the government and the military, everything becomes very inhumane. So if we can reduce social institutions to the level of tribes and eliminate large organizational structures with absolute power, there is more hope to achieve a trustless state. When we think about human social systems, we want them to change, but sometimes we are also seeking personal change. These two are not contradictory. Both the system and the self need a certain degree of change to reconstruct the social system, and all of this requires the support of networks. The value of the blockchain space lies in the vast soil it provides.

📝 Summary#

With a noble and kind starting point, Petr founded Upala, hoping to establish a decentralized digital identity system to replace traditional identity verification systems. In his ideological system, human nature is good, and everything that people pursue is towards a better and harmonious direction. He feels uncomfortable with the power of modern society's government and corporations, and he hopes to replace the existing social structure with a smaller organization. Upala is currently not open to users, and interested friends can download related tools from their GitHub account to try.

Petr's attempts may fail, but his thoughts and actions on social organization will bring us more inspiration.

Glossary#

[1] Witch attack: An attack on computer network services in which the attacker creates a large number of pseudonymous identities to gain disproportionate influence on the network. This is achieved by subverting the network's reputation system, making it difficult for the network to distinguish between legitimate users and attackers.

[2] Witch resistance: Refers to the ability of a network to resist witch attacks (Sybil attacks).

Supplementary Materials#

[1] https://docs.upala.id/en/latest/whitepaper.html

[2] https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2008/2008.05300.pdf

[3] https://www.aicoin.com/en/article/324282

[4] https://github.com/upala-digital-identity/upala

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past episodes

Talking about the Metacrisis with Daniel Schmachtenberger｜Part 1

Theories and Practices of "Radical Markets"

Review of the details of Gitcoin Grants Round 14

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