Biomapper on the horizon
Many have asked about the progression of the Humanode cryptobiometrics, and what we at Humanode are doing to implement it in “real life” beyond using it as a tool to allow people to become Humanode Validators. Yes, the Humanode team came up with BotBasher, but it seems to be free of charge (at least for now), and it doesn’t seem to lead to filling the coffer or additional funds to be paid out to the Validators.
The first thing that you need to understand about the vision of Humanode, is that we have a clear roadmap, and we are moving forward with the development step by step, implementing what we have envisioned, each step of the way.
Aside from bio-authenticating nodes, the very first step that Humanode took was, as most know, BotBasher for Discord. BotBasher for Discord allows users to privately and securely tie their biometrics to one Discord account, allowing the servers to verify that there is a living unique human being behind that Discord account. Only anonymised and encrypted biometric data is sent to the servers, and no private biometric data is accessible to Humanode, and the data remains private, safe, and secure.
The Humanode team designated BotBasher for Discord as a “PoC”, or proof of concept deployment of cryptobiometrics. Everyone is free to use it for free, and servers can utilize it in however way they think helps their community the best. Verified human only chatrooms? Easy! “One person one vote” voting? Sure! Sybil resistant whitelisting? Naturally! Sybil resistant airdrops? Make it happen!
With more and more partnerships being formed, servers adopting BotBasher (300+), and more and more usecases, and more and more people being BotBasher verified (270k+), the Humanode team was able to gain a clear glimpse of real life use-cases, and a vision of the path that we need to take (aside from making BotBasher available to other platforms like Telegram).
The Second Step
The second step that the team took, was the Biomapper. In short, Biomapper, or private on-chain Biomapping, allows users to scan their biometrics to prove that there is a live and unique human being behind the paired Humanode EVM address (EVM wallet address), while ensuring that the actual biometric data remains completely private, securely encrypted in Confidential Virtual Machines. Consider it like zero-knowledge proof (ZKPs), where the system can verify the authenticity of the information without needing to know the specific biometric information itself.
Many may already be familiar with the first usecase of Biomapper, as it is used in Humanode's Nonlinear LP Staking.
This liquidity pool was set up in hope of allowing a more equitable distribution of rewards, by making sure larger liquidity providers do not reap all of the rewards while ensuring that smaller liquidity providers are not disproportionately disadvantaged. (Read more about the Humanode Nonlinear LP Staking here) In order to earn rewards in this model, stakers must go through Bio-authentication in the “Biomapper” app, and tie their biometrics to the Humanode EVM account that the user will be using. No Biomapping, no reward.
This is but one example of how Biomapper can be utilized. The most likely early usecases that are partners are mentioning are naturally for Sybil-resistant Airdrops, Sybil-resistant Whitelisting, and unique user-only sign-ups for DApps and Play-to-earn games.
In essence, by utilizing Biomapper and proving that there is a real unique human behind an account, it can provide a strong foundational layer of trust across various applications, from DApps to Web2 platforms and Web3 services, ensuring secure, fair, and genuine user interactions.
The Key.
One of the major keys is the fact that Biomapper is a combination of the OAuth2, CVMs, and Bio-tokens (created by combining biometrics and the EVM address), a signer server, a number of smart contracts that will allow the various services to utilize the Biomapper functions.
The key, is that the developers that are interested in utilizing the Humanode Biomapper for their Web2 or Web3 services, or DApps only need to use the Biomapper smart contracts to “call” the uniqueness checks in order to utilize it. No need for an official partnership. In reality, it would only be a few lines of code required to implement the functionality.
So, who pays for Biomapper? Well, for a user to Biomap their biometrics to their EVM address it costs roughly 1 USD (the price may fluctuate depending on the exchange rate, as the fee is paid in HMND). Considering there is a “reset” of the biometric server every 6 months or so for security reasons and for technical upgrades, it would cost roughly $2 per year to prove that your account is backed by a real, live, unique human.
“$2 per service per year!?” you say. No. “$2 per year for however many services you use the Biomapper with”. Once you have been “mapped”, you will use the same bio-token associated with your face and EVM address for all services that utilize the Biomapper.
In fact, the whole purpose of the Biomapper would be negated if one was able to have multiple addresses tied to the same face, as Biomapper is used as the foundation for the proof of uniqueness for the various services.
When will Biomapper be available to developers?
Very soon. The documentation, and final touches to the Biomapper website are being worked on at this very moment. One thing to note though, is that at stage 1 of the implementation of Biomapper, a developer will only be able to use the smart contracts on the Humanode EVM chain. Having said that, we do not expect it to take long to be able to use Biomapper on other chains that utilize EVM addresses in the near future, as talks are already underway with cross-chain messaging Bridges that cover a wide range of chains. It is needless to say that we also have a number of top 100 L1 and L2 protocols that have been waiting to implement Biomapper to assist them in their fight against Sybil attacks.
“So, what does this mean to the Humanode Community?” you ask. The answer is simple. As HMND is required to pay for the mapping, people will need to buy HMND to map their face and address to the Biomapper (current price for Biomapping is 5 HMND, and will change at each server reset to be as close to 1 USD as possible at the time of the reset) . All profit will be shared equally between Validator nodes, much like transaction fees.
The more fees generated by transactions and additional service fees, means that Humanode will be able to cover the fees for the Validators through profit, and not through reserves (as of December 2023, 57% of the fees paid out to validators were covered via income), and we will be able to expand the Validator pool beyond the current number of Validators that earn rewards. The more in the Validator pool, the safer the system, the more decentralized, and the faster the growth of our Humanode ecosystem.
Although we are only on step 2 on the road to providing cryptobiometrics as a service that anyone can utilize, and there is much more on the horizon (such as SRGate/Humanode ID), we are excited about being at the brink of the launch of Biomapper as a product, and can’t wait to announce its official launch!