As many others, we’re all on a quest to find the holy grail of digital identity. A way to prove who we are online without handing our entire lives over to Google, governments, or some shady corporation. Surely zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) were the solution! Untraceable, secure... the ultimate shield. But are they? Vitalik Buterin, with his recent writings on the subject, throws a wrench in that otherwise well-oiled machine. And I think he’s right.
One Ring to Rule Them All?
The issue with most of the ZK-based ID systems being proposed is that they quietly lead us down the road to a universal digital ID. Think about it: a single, cryptographically-secured key to unlock your entire online existence. Sounds convenient, sure. But it's a terrifying honey pot. That’s a bit like storing all your gold in one vault, and expecting to put your gold inside the vault guarded by one easily bribed guard.
We crypto people are meant to be the ones creating a new world outside of centralized control. These single-ID solutions, no matter how ZK magical they are, will necessarily have a single point of failure, a single point of control. The EU’s digital ID initiative and Taiwan’s project are vastly promising. Even the best-intentioned efforts, such as World ID, now with more than 10 million users, can become instruments of oppression when weaponized. Alternatively, a government could force you to disclose your “real” identity associated with that ZK-wrapped ID. What then?
More Identities Equals More Privacy?
This is where Vitalik’s idea of “pluralistic IDs” gets super intriguing. It's counterintuitive, I know. We’ve become accustomed to the idea that less accounts, less profiles, means more privacy. Vitalik flips that on its head.
Picture this – you’re DJing at the club in one of those big underground techno parties. You certainly wouldn’t want your employer—or perhaps even your mother—finding out about your after-hours performances. A single, ZK-wrapped ID busts your cover the moment it’s connected to your “real” name. Now imagine you have multiple pseudonymous IDs. One for the speakeasy-esque members-only secretive club, one for your professional crypto investments, one for your professional life. Each is separate, compartmentalized. If one does get hacked, the loss only extends so far. Your entire digital life isn't exposed.
This is the core of Vitalik's argument: distributed risk. Explicit pluralism, like social-graph based systems such as Circles, contributes to our safety. In the same way, implicit pluralism — relying on multiple ID providers, such as local governments and private social platforms — helps protect us.
Sybil Resistance and the N² Cost
Of course, the big question is: how do we prevent Sybil attacks? How do we prevent one person from being able to generate thousands, potentially even millions, of new fake IDs. Vitalik alludes to this, and this really is the crux of a complicated problem. Luckily, he rightly rejects “proof-of-wealth” as a solution, because it concentrates power. The rich get richer, and the low-income get locked out. That's not the crypto ethos.
He recommends investigating mechanisms that require producing N identities to be done at the cost of N². In other words, the more IDs you have to generate, the exponentially more expensive it is. This is where the magic of smart contracts comes into play. We might create systems where it gets progressively harder to create an ID—where each new ID requires more computational resources, more collateral, or more social proof. This certainly won’t be easy, but it’s a key piece of the advocacy puzzle to figure out. Now picture an ever more time-consuming process to produce new IDs to vote in a DAO.
Crypto's Chance to Resist Big Brother
This isn’t merely a privacy issue. Rather, it is a matter of freedom. Our hope is to avoid involuntarily paving the way for a digital panopticon. None of us want all our movements tracked, saved, and maybe someday used to harm us. Pluralistic IDs, overarching by decentralized ideals, are a good place to start to push back against that future.
I hope this will serve as a rallying cry for the bitcoin and crypto community. We should all be skeptical of centralized ID solutions, even those wearing the fancy ZK technology cape. We have to invest in these kinds of pluralistic identity systems on purpose and with full-throated support. These initiatives further empower individuals to assert control over their own data.
We need to ask ourselves: are we building a decentralized utopia, or a more efficient surveillance state? The choice, ultimately, is ours. However, don’t let the promise of ZK blind you to the potential dangers of a single, all-encompassing digital identity. Embrace pluralism. Protect your freedom.
