An ambitious blockchain project has turned to FaceTec for biometric technology that will prove to be critical to its platform, delivering one of the most notable testaments yet to the sophistication of FaceTec’s technology.
The project, dubbed “Humanode”, aims to build a distributed financial network that takes an alternative approach to transaction validation. Essentially, the aim is to make each human end user a node on the network.
‘Proof of Existence’
This is a distinct approach in comparison to the dominant means of transaction validation on other blockchain platforms. Bitcoin, for example, is known for the ‘Proof of Work’ approach, in which nodes are incentivized to support the blockchain by the opportunity to ‘mine’ cryptocurrency through elaborate computations. Ethereum, on the other hand, has been moving toward a ‘Proof of Stake’ model in which nodes can support the platform by investing a cryptocurrency stake on which they essentially earn interest.
The Humanode team want to base their blockchain on a network of nodes in which each node is irrefutably tied to a single human being. This, as Humanode explains in its pitch deck, is a model based not on Proof of Work or Proof of Stake, but upon ‘Proof of Uniqueness’ and ‘Proof of Existence’.
The advantage of this particular model is that it would give each network participant equal validation and voting power, and would prevent the emergence of large-scale mining groups and “validator oligopolies”, as Humanode explains. It would also prevent a single entity from creating multiple accounts in order to obtain a larger influence on the network – referred to as a “sybil attack” in the industry.
‘An Essential Key’
This bold project entails one critical obstacle: confirming the uniqueness and liveness of each end user, while maintaining the kind of anonymity that blockchain and cryptocurrencies enable. And to that end, Humanode has turned to FaceTec and its 3D face authentication and liveness technology.
The technology allows Humanode to anchor an end user’s node to their unique 3D FaceMap, and to enable ongoing authentication using smartphone and PC cameras that are widely available to consumers. At the same time, there’s no need to tie the end user to any particular biographic information, allowing the Humanode platform to maintain a decentralized network of pseudonymous identities.
In a statement, Humanode co-founder Dato Kavazi praised FaceTec’s technology, and emphasized its importance to the Humanode project. “FaceTec’s 3D Face Authentication, Liveness Detection, and Face Matching software provides both privacy and interoperability and is an essential key for our platform to be able to provide privacy, security, and sybil defense,” he said.
Mutual Appreciation for Tech Innovation
Because pseudonymous biometric identity verification is so central to the Humanode project, the group’s selection of FaceTec’s technology offers a meaningful indication of the kind of trust that the latter has won in the competitive selfie biometrics market. Thanks to the sophistication of FaceTec’s 3D face authentication and liveness detection technology, and in part to the company’s $100,000 spoof bounty program backing up its platform, FaceTec has delivered impressive results in terms of revenue growth, with its latest quarterly update showing a year-over-year improvement of 293 percent.
The respect goes both ways. For FaceTec’s part, CEO Kevin Alan Tussy expressed his team’s admiration for the Humanode project ahead of the latter’s public test net launch scheduled for September of this year. “We are very impressed by Humanode’s approach to digital identity and look forward to working side-by-side with their team to bring some truly groundbreaking new ideas to fruition,” he said.
Assuming a successful test run, Humanode is aiming to get its main net up and running in June of next year.
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(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)
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