October Newsletter
- Integrating Worldcoin and extending the use of World ID with V2 of the Proof-of-Humanity plug-in
- Expanding the plug-in to Discord at Eth London
PoH upgrade — Why Rarimo Integrated Worldcoin
One of Rarimo’s greatest challenges during the early days of community-building was the tidal wave of bots that swamped our socials. This is, unfortunately, a widespread issue, and so in August, Rarimo launched a solution: the Proof-of-Humanity plug-in.
This plug-in allows projects and platforms to filter out bots by gating access to users who have proven their humanity. Crucially, the plug-in also provides users with a choice over how they do this. Users select their verification method from a range of four identity providers and then generate and submit zero-knowledge proofs that affirm they have met requirements that only a real person could meet.
Last month, Rarimo added a series of groundbreaking new features to the plug-in and launched its much-awaited V2.
One of the most exciting of these features was the integration with Worldcoin. World ID holders now have a new way to leverage their proof-of-personhood outside of the Worldcoin ecosystem and across all of the platforms that have integrated Rarimo’s plug-in.
Introducing Worldcoin: counteracting the risks of AI
For those unfamiliar with Worldcoin, the project was co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. As AI-generated content grows increasingly widespread, Worldcoin’s mission is to help the digital world adapt by developing new kinds of online infrastructure. Their World ID acts as a digital passport that holders can use to prove that they are human and not, therefore, a bot or a machine.
Unlike traditional passports, however, Wordcoin’s World ID does not rely on personal information about users — no names, no addresses, no birthdays. Instead, it is a biometric solution that uses iris scans to generate numerical ‘iris codes’ that reflect the unique humanness of users. Spherical pieces of hardware devices called ‘Orbs’ have been set up around the world and are used to conduct the iris imaging.
Iris imaging & embedding privacy in biometrics
The notion of iris-imaging has inevitably caused a stir, with the concept being too dystopic for some, but as Vitalik highlighted in a recent blog post, Worldcoin offers an exceptionally high level of privacy. By default, no images of user irises are stored, only the codes, and these are not linked to any personal information.
Rari Labs’ stance: transparency, privacy and user agency
Rari Labs’ stance on biometrics is that it is neither intrinsically invasive nor intrinsically safe. Instead, it depends on what’s happening under the hood and whether or not users have agency, privacy, and transparency. Worldcoin has introduced these qualities into a space that desperately needs them. Iris-imaging is becoming increasingly widespread yet users seldom have any insight or control over how their biological data is used. Take, for instance, at airport security; how those scans are stored and used remains a total blackbox.
Rarimo’s work: bringing optionality to Proof-of-Humanity
Ultimately, our identities, digital or otherwise, are deeply personal. How we choose to verify and express them is largely a matter of taste. While some of us may prefer to prove our humanity using biometrics, others may be more comfortable with social graph methods which rely on attestations from other humans, or the monetization barrier which leverages the same logic as Proof-of-Work and prices out bots and sybils. Through its range of identity providers: Gitcoin Passport, Unstoppable Domains, Civic, and now Worldcoin, Rarimo ensures that users have access to their preferred method.
Rari Labs is proud to have expanded the utility of World ID and increased the number of verification methods that users can pick from when using the proof-of-humanity plug-in.
Additional Features
As well as the Worldcoin integration, Rarimo’s PoH plug-in V2 includes several other notable features:
Expansion to Discord
- Thanks to amazing hackers at Eth London — the PoH solution is now available on Discord.
- This is covered in more detail below in the Eth London section
Integration with RariMe, Rarimo’s MetaMask Snap
- This allows users to store their PoH credentials in MetaMask and use them seamlessly across multiple chains and platforms
Embedded games
- For all their magic, Zero Knowledge Proofs are computationally intensive and can take up to three minutes to generate. After the launch of the V1 plug-in, we noticed that some participants appeared to get bored while waiting for their proofs
- To remedy this, Rarimo updated the plug-in’s UI so that as the ZKP generates, users can play games and puzzles such as minesweeper, or browse fun facts about ZK cryptography.
Exclusive rewards, SBTs, and an exclusive Discord channel
- In return for generating a PoH and keeping Web3 bot-free, Rarimo rewards all verified humans with an SBT that grants access to an exclusive Discord channel, the Humanity-Station
- Not only are discounts and giveaways distributed to the Proof-of-Humanity community through this channel, it creates space for community members interested in digital identity, combating AI, and the future of Proof-of-Humanity to connect and chat
Platform Expansion
- The plug-in launched on two new community-building platforms, Zealy and QuestN
- SocialFi platform Talent Protocol integrated the plug-in on their app to ensure that only humans were unlocking perks such as customizable NFTs
Test out V2 of the plug-in and join the growing Proof-of-Humanity movement by completing a PoH gated quest:
Eth London — expanding PoH to Discord
Rarimo was a proud sponsor of the Eth London Hackathon.
Rarimo’s central challenge invited hackers to extend the Proof-of-Humanity plug-in to Discord so that communities can keep their servers bot-free.
Thanks to the phenomenal work of Kryptopaul and JoyGuo who took home the 3k USDC prize, this was successfully achieved.
Catch the demo below, and if you are a project looking to rid your Discord server of the dreaded GM GM GM, you can find and implement Joy and Paul’s open source code on Github.
Second place and a 2k prize went to Fidesium.
Rarimo also set a non-technical challenge for the best article on potential use cases for self-sovereign identity in defi. In a testament to the growing interest in digital identity in Web3, this turned out to be one of the most popular challenges at the hackathon, receiving over twenty submissions.
JoyGuo once again took home the prize. Her thoughtful and innovative piece can be read here on Mirror. Runner-ups Iona Marin and Peter McQuaid’s work can be found on Medium and Github, respectively.
Rari Labs director Kitty Horlick leads a workshop on using combatting bots on-chain with Rarimo’s Proof-of-Humanity plug-in
