What are the possible solutions to Sybil attacks if there are any. But here’s what you need to know about Sybil attacks and the surprising solution to this problem Sybil attacks.
Sybil attacks got their name from the case study of a woman, Sybil Dorsett who suffered from multiple personality disorder.
This alone explains a lot about the nature of these attacks.They are attacks in which an attacker creates multiple false identities to gain disproportionate influence in a network.
For instance, someone creating multiple Twitter accounts and using them to vote on polls giving them an unfair advantageOr someone running multiple nodes on the Bitcoin network and launching a 51% attack.
Sybil resistance is the ability of a system to resist Sybil attacks.Web2 systems generally achieved this by collecting user data to avoid duplicate identities.
As a rule of thumb, the more value is on the network, the more data is required making it difficult to create a false ID.It’s really easy to create multiple Twitter accounts, but that’s ok since the platform isn’t meant for high-value interactions.
But it’s a lot more difficult on other high-value platforms since they generally require more user info.But this inevitably meant these platforms would have access to user data which is sometimes monetized.
But even if it isn’t, the fact that the data is stored on centralized databases leaves it vulnerable to attack.
So, web2 sacrificed privacy on the altar of sybil resistance.But obviously, web3 was going to take a different approach.
It costs nothing to create a new wallet. So there has to be some way to make sure more wallets don’t mean more influence.
On the consensus level, sybil resistance was ‘achieved’ using some interesting approaches.Proof-of-Work requires each node to contribute computing power to the network in order to participate in the consensus.
So even if you create multiple addresses without a computer for each of them, you’re still just one node in terms of voting power.
Proof-of-Stake assigns voting power to validators based on the amount of coins they stake.
So there’s no way to increase your influence by merely creating new addresses. You’d need to stake more coins too.We see the same principles applied in other fields like protocol governance.
Where, just like PoS, voting power is proportional to governance tokens.
But the thing is, when you think of it, these methods don’t really solve the problem.They simply make it a lot more expensive for anyone to succeed with a sybil attack.
Someone could still buy enough computers to overtake a PoW network.
Someone could still buy enough coins to overtake a PoS network or a DAO governance.
And we’ve seen it happen before.The actual problem is how to make sure that each on-chain address is equivalent to a single person IRL… at least to a reasonable extent.
And this is extremely difficult.
So far, there’s only one network I’ve seen solving this at this fundamental level – GalacticaNetThey introduce the idea of persistent identities which means each private key is equal to an actual person and is extremely difficult to replicate.
Now, you could create a ton of addresses if you wanted to, but they’d all be worthless.
And that’s because of two major features.Zk certificates
SBTs that use zk tech to prove qualities of the holder without revealing any data.
An on-chain reputation scoring contract that analyzes an address’s on-chain history and assigns it a score based on any chosen set of criteria.With these, a lot of things that just weren’t previously possible can now be achieved on-chain.
Protocols can offer undercollateralized loans to addresses whose reputation scores meet a certain threshold.
A more reliable reputation score can then be created on-chain.Protocol governance can achieve true Sybil resistance where each person’s voting power isn’t just proportional to the amount of money they have.
Protocols that require certain levels of compliance can achieve that with the help of zk certs while still ensuring user privacy.The possibilities are just so many.
Basically, all of the reputation-based interactions that happen off-chain but are difficult to implement on-chain will suddenly become possible.I’m really optimistic about what they’re building and I think you should check it out.
