Abstract

We describe an open proof-of-personhood protocol for verifying that a human was present at the moment of a specific online action, providing sybil resistance distinct from account authentication and legal-identity (KYC) verification. The protocol defines four optional, independently held verification layers, surfaced on a user profile as the set of layers held rather than a scalar trust level: (L1) a per-action FIDO2/WebAuthn biometric-gated signature over the action's content and timestamp; (L2) a kinship-graph attestation combining graph-consistency checks, co-signature of each parent-child link by an already-verified human, institutional or community membership vouching, and optional birth-certificate validation; (L3) continuous liveness from respiratory-rhythm signals emitted by a wearable device (a design premise still to be validated); and (L4) opt-in DNA kinship verification with encrypted storage and result-only disclosure. No layer is mandatory. Recipients, not the platform, apply filters: content moderation; radio-layer proximity verified over Bluetooth Low Energy, with ultra-wideband ranging and peer-to-peer nearby-connection APIs as further substrates, using rotating unlinkable beacons so that only a binary proximity result is disclosed; required-subset predicates over layers held, such as L1 AND (L3 OR L4); degrees of separation in the kinship graph; and a Hashcash-style attached-value cost. For anonymous actions the recipient receives a receipt attesting a verified human sender, while the sender receives no exportable proof and no interface lists a sender's actions. KYC and self-authored records are excluded from the layer stack. Stated limits cover coercion, latency, and the unequal accessibility of deeper layers; ability-keyed layers are refused.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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