Introduction

From truth=authority to truth=money, how much has changed? In the Humanode protocol, truth=human existence

Increasing attention to decentralized ledger solutions over the recent decade gave rise to a whole class of projects oriented toward encryption methods and consensus mechanisms. These scientific pursuits have never been exposed to capital in such a direct manner. An abundance of capital has created a massive research wave on a variety of decentralized transaction verification systems. Simultaneously, biometric processing has evolved to a stage where search and matching operations can maintain privacy while liveness detection error probabilities decline by the day.

Humanode is a network based on cryptographically secure bio-authorized nodes. Using solutions that provide private search and matching operations and liveness detection algorithms, users will be able to deploy nodes to create a public permissionless financial network based on consensus between human nodes who share the fees and ownership of the network in an equal manner.

Modern decentralized verification systems rely on the concept of material obligations to prevent malicious activity—Proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain systems blacklist mining equipment, Proof-of-Stake (PoS) slashes tokens. The main focus of these protection mechanisms is to create a system in which attacks are unimaginably costly for any hypothetical predator. This reliance rises from problems of distrust on many levels, but most importantly because any trust system requires an instrument for preventing malicious activity. As human nodes are not created through mining farms or monetary obligations in the form of staking, they are not exposed to the same angle of attack. The Humanode network will prevent malicious activity by blacklisting biometric data, meaning that your biometric identity becomes the stake.

Human nodes are created through cryptobiometric authentication, which is a combination of cryptographically secure matching and liveness detection mechanisms to verify the uniqueness and existence of real human beings. Thus, the user's pseudonymous biometric identity becomes the stake that gives access to the creation of a node that verifies transactions. This approach mitigates the problem of the disproportion of power in decentralized systems such as mining cartels or validator oligopolies. In the Humanode network, only one node derives from one biometric identity. This also means that every node is equal in terms of voting and computation power, while rewards for verification and storage are equally distributed among the human nodes.

As the right to launch human nodes is not entangled with a native token, it allows the implementation of any monetary system without the necessity of conforming to the requirements of capital-based Sybil-defense systems. With human nodes replacing staked assets, it is now possible to avoid a disproportion of token emission between those who stake, validate, or simply hold the asset.

Humanode will implement the Fath hypothesis as the mechanism for monetary supply adjustment and proportional distribution of emission. The main idea behind the Fath hypothesis is a full-reserve system that calculates the amount of goods and services sold in equal periods of time. If the value created in the new period is greater than the value in the previous one by 1%, the Fath protocol issues 1% of the supply and delivers it to every single wallet in the network, depending on the account balance (savings). If the wallet holds 1% of the supply during the emission, it gets 1% of the minted tokens directly from the protocol.

Any person in the world, no matter where they are from or who they are, can become a human node, as long as that person has access to devices that can conduct biometric processing (for example, a smartphone with a camera and biometric processing applications for recognition) or other verified hardware. The system delivers the equality of every single human node by deriving only one node from one biometric identity and mitigates any disproportion of power due to reward equality of individuals. As the system implements the Fath hypothesis, which negates the effect of devaluation on agents of the system, this narrows gaps between the users of the network as the emitted value is distributed proportionally to every participant.

The main goal of Humanode is to create a stable and just financial network that relies on the existence of human life itself. We aim to alleviate all the intermediaries that stand between a person and his ability to become a validator of transactions. Humanode strives to deliver easy node creation flows and make it natural for any human to verify their unique existence privately in any digital service. We acknowledge the power of a strong and idea-driven community, and that is why Humanode will be an open-source project. We believe that by joining forces together with passionate minds and hearts throughout the world we will be able to achieve a balanced state of the system that will ensure our economic freedom and stability and safeguard the future of our children, grandchildren, and many generations to come. The symbiosis of humans and technology is inevitable, and Humanode is just a small but important step in the large transcendence period that we are all going through.