Kitty, Lasha Antadze, Oleksandr Kurbatov
On October 10th, Georgian MPs used Rarimo to bring national IDs on-chain and revolutionize the upcoming election process in Georgia.
This use of decentralized identities by elected officials marks a significant milestone for Web3 and was made possible by a single breakthrough: Rarimo’s ZK Identity Registry.
Rarimo’s ZK Identity Registry
Rarimo’s ZK Identity Registry allows users to establish verifiable, self-issued identities. It is permissionless and offers an unprecedented level of privacy.
Any range of identities can be added to the registry, but in this article, we use passports as a case study.
The problems this registry solves
If you care about privacy (and we suggest that you really, really should), then the trickiest part of identity quickly becomes uniqueness.
It only takes one look at airdrop farming to understand why systems need to be able to rule out duplicates, but how can we verify that users are unique while also keeping their personal data private?
Almost every single pre-existing identity framework out there solves this dilemma by relying on trusted issuers to authenticate the uniqueness of a users’ identity artifacts. These artifacts can range from anything from iris scans to identity documents.
The model is as problematic as it is widespread. As we all know, trusted third parties bring substantial privacy risks.
Rarimo’s ZK identity registry, however, relies on artifacts such as passports that not only prove uniqueness but have already been issued. This cuts out the need for third party issuers.
Users generate hashes from the keys inside their passports and publish them on-chain, in the identity registry. In the process, they self issue their own identity.
It is also remarkably easy for them to do this; users simply tap the NFC chip inside their passport with their phones, and depending on the design of the app they’re using, click one or two buttons to get started.
Privacy on Steroids: the Network Effect
Getting rid of issuers is not the only way Rarimo ZK Identity Registry guarantees privacy.
Part of the beauty of the registry is that although a user’s nullifier (hash) is on-chain, no personal information about them ever is.
Instead, all of the information from their ID, such as age and citizenship is stored in a self-custody wallet on their mobile device and represented as an incognito profile. A keypair binds this profile to the hash.
Once a user publishes their hash on-chain they can start to generate ZKPs confirming their age, citizenship, and, critically, uniqueness.
No third party, from government to corporation to malign individual, will ever be able to figure out what these proofs are generated for, or what activities users are participating in.
Even if an outside party seized possession of a user’s passport keys, nothing more than the fact that they registered their ID, could be confirmed.
Did they register to, say vote in an election, or to collect meme coins? The question will never be answered.
As the range of applications and the number of users on Rarimo grows, the network dilutes, and it becomes increasingly difficult to even speculate on user activity.
For this reason we community coined a new term to describe the kind of security assurances the ZK Identity Registry offers: Privacy as Network Effect.
Live use cases
Rarimo’s ZK Identity Registry is at the heart of United Space, the identity app launched by Georgia’s leading Opposition party, the United National Movement (UNM).
United Space is designed to strengthen democratic processes in the run-up to Georgia’s parloiamentary elections on October 26th. It is currently used to:
- Host surveillance-free, tamper-proof polling
- Combat low voter turnout with a point system that rewards citizens for polling and voting regardless of political allegiance
The UNM have highlighted that one of the reasons United Space is so critically needed is that it will capture the voices of the 1 million Georgian expatriates who have so controversially been prevented from participating in the election.
The UNM has also pledged that if elected, they will also use United Space to:
- Distribute Universal Basic Income
- Implement a liquid democracy model, where citizens vote not just in elections but, continuously, on legislation
- Digitize Georgia’s Public Service Hall (PSH) which manages all registries for cars, businesses, and notaries
United Space not only uses and fuels Rarimo’s ZK Identity registry, it also uses Rarimo’s surveillance-free voting solution, Freedom Tool. You can read more about how the registry heightens Freedom Tool’s security guarantees here.
As the UNM’s point system and plans for Universal Basic Income illustrate however, voting is only one of many use cases that the ZK Identity Registry can be used for.
This is only just the beginning.
