DAPPCON 2025: The Sybil War - Nick Almond

Transcript

Um, okay, we got a clicker, right, welcome everyone. Um, just a bit of a warning. This covers some pretty dark themes in at times and there's a bit of naughty language just as a warning. Um, yeah, my uh talk is called the civil war. It's about uh civil resistance. Um, it's also um I've added this subtitle. I didn't know whether I was going to stick it to worldcoin today or not, but I decided to go full tilt. Um, and why you should learn to start worrying and hate the orbs. You should hate this technology, and I'm here to persuade you that that is the case. So, what I'm going to do is basically overview what

civil attacks are, throw a bit of theory at you, nothing too heavy, but there's a couple of key concepts that I want you to use as a kind of analytical tool. By the way, these are just my opinions. This is my opinions only, not affiliated with anyone. Um, and yeah, so broadly, what are the challenges? And even more broadly, [ __ ] Worldcoin. Um, so what do we know about civil attacks? Well, a civil attack is basically just the act of duplicating an identity with the purpose of gaming a reputation system for gain. So the reality of blockchain systems is that they create pseudonymous identities. I can spin up a public private key pair represent a public key that is linked to me and only knows only

me knows that's my public identity. It's a pseudonym. Um civil resistance is an attempt to crush pseudo anonymity. It's to limit the amount of identities you are allowed in a system. And there's reasons for that, right? It breaks voting systems. I've spent years building voting systems. It's a pain in the ass. It breaks review systems and people farm airdrops and stuff like that with it. Uh it's a desirable property in some systems. Um key bit of game theory. The civil war is an escalation game. So there's ways of modeling game theoretic systems.

One's called a stackleberg leader follower game. And that's what I think this is. Works like this. I build a civil resistance system. And you an adversary who wants to break my system builds a strategy that that that counters my defense. So I then go back and say, "Ah, these guys have broke in. I'm now going to add a strategy and then they add a strategy and it implicitly escalates, right?" The reality of it is that this system is like adding hops into the game and all parties have to play that game whatever it is. So the way that we deal with this in the kind of current status quo, I would say particularly centralized exchanges do this, but banks and most financial

systems will have to do this. they dox you. Um, and you will have seen this escalatory game over the years where you used to be able to sign up with an email address, but then it's an SMS and now you need my passport and then a utility bill and then etc etc all the way up from letters from HR in order to get my money back. Uh, now the problem here is that once I've done all this, I can just sell my account to someone. So you have to cyclically redox over and over and over again. That's the escalation game. Another key point, you cannot win the civil war. This is a war of attrition.

This escalation game knows no ends. The more you escalate the game, the more atrocities that you create. This is a key argument I'm trying to make is that chasing perfect civil resistance is the path to hell. You are simply escalating this game into territories where only the worst villains on the planet will win. And they will. Corbetta theory. I want you to sort of understand this idea of affordances. Um this was a paper by James Gibson, an ecological approach to visual perception. Uh this guy was during the world war responsible for like helping planes land. And he realized when he was designing the sort of markings that go

on runways that pilots don't look is this a runway, they look can I land on this? Right? So the they he altered the markings to pass information to the pilots to show that it is landable. And he called this an affordance, right? Um how it works is man here, cat, mouse, rock. Uh the man's looking at this system going, "What can I do here?" So is the mouse. The mouse here uses this rock to hide behind it. It's a hiding place. The affordance of the rock to the mouse is hide. The cat knows this and he's thinking, "Is there a mouse behind there?" To him, the rock is somewhere where there might be food.

To the guy who's holding the rock, he's thinking, "What can I do to this? I can smash things up with it. I might trip over it if I'm not careful." Uh, it affords throwing smashing. It affords the creation of cat and mouse games, which is very much what civil resistance game is. So society as it interacts with technologies changes the technology itself. So affordances of technologies emerge as the technology is used and not all of them have good. So what I call this is a kind of technological inversion when the technology makes it into society. Unknown affordances emerge and they're often pretty [ __ ] So we've seen this with like social inversion

tools that are designed for things like pro productivity become a kind of surveillance tool uh corporate surveillance tool. We think right we're going to make DeFi but what we create is ponzies. We create governance tools which are designed to emancipate but end up centralizing power on someone who can kill rug everyone button. Um cognitive inversion. We've seen the monsters that have been unleashed by social media. The like allows you to like but it also has created a kind of clattocracy that we live in now. Bit of latest research on civil resistance. Highly recommend this paper.

It's called uh compressed to zero uh by Pujo Alhavver and Mikail from Medina. and they kind of an analyzed this uh network that was designed to get away with all that pesky kind of like money involved with validating cryptoeconomic systems and replace it with an identity system. And they did that by creating this thing they called a filter of intelligent persons or flips. Uh and you needed to basically it was a little puzzle that only humans were really good at. Um problem is it got cible attacked. In fact, the network got took over by cibbles. By the end it was just sibbles in the end. And what happened was u these kind of pools emerged. Uh core mantra of mine every game will be gamed.

All of these are like uh any game any cryptoeconomic game is effectively temporary and needs to evolve in order to match the market. And in the world of civils the this turns into a kind of strategic game between you and the adversaries. Um you can think of this as control of information. I don't know what's going on. Uh, and but I'm in control. That means I've got my private key, but don't really know what this game is or what it's doing or whatever. Uh, and I can sell my private keys to someone else. Again, low information game, but now someone else controls my private keys.

That happened a lot. But then what really started to happen in what what uh Pua called puppeteering, which is this process where people would round up humans. If you need humans, you will farm humans in order to do it. And in fact, there's pictures here of uh a little child labor setup that was there for like um farming Adena. So that brings me to the core affordances of Worldcoin. Worldcoin directly incentivizes the creation of human slavery.

That is a fact. In this very city, people got rounded up by Chetchen gangsters to take into orbs to be farmed for coins, aka human slavery. This is happening a lot. And in fact, the more that you ramp the value of those world IDs, the more valuable those eyeballs become. All we need to do is turn that into some kind of airdrop shitcoin factory, and people will be getting rounded up all the time for their eyeballs. In fact, the more value it becomes, the more the game escalates and the more eyeball farms that we will get to what it actually states its purpose

is, right? It say it claims it's civil resistance. It's a bit fuzzy, but really what it does, it affords apps perfect control over the number of accounts that their users can have. Right? So, what this means is I orb into the into the application. It's a privacy preserving layer at the bottom. It uses some nice ZK etc etc. And what this means it does is the app has no knowledge of which world ID has logged in. But once I'm in the app, it's up to the app what they do with me, including dox me and all that sort of stuff, right? So they can collect as much data. In fact, most of these will be web two apps, so we'll farm the [ __ ] out of you when it comes

to data. Um, and it also gives them the ability to say you can have just one account, right? Come to this later, but they've just done a deal with match group and Tinder, etc. Obviously don't want you to have more than one Tinder account. That would be terrible, wouldn't it? So, we're just going to give one um pass to this person. Now, if you get deplatformed from that, if you get banned for whatever reason, it's over for you. There is no way back. This is a highly desirable affordance for technologies. So one affordance of worldcoin is that it's a highfidelity rug button. I like to think of this as like a sword of damocles hanging over you when any world app that you are in.

If they ban you, it's over. You're out. Now fair enough, right? I've got I've been banned from Reddit or whatever. Who gives a [ __ ] But what this does is is basically just elevate the power of an already powerful system, big tech. Now they are in control over whether I have access to this technology with perfect fidelity. I've been banned by Claude. I don't know why what I've said to it. If I'd orbed, it's over for me. I can get a I've got burner phones for this kind of [ __ ] and VPNs. So what, right?

But if I'd orbed, done. So WorldCoin affords big tech to become even more powerful. How lovely. It doesn't stop there. The problem is is when these world apps become much more powerful than even big tech. I think this is going to happen. We are so close. It's not even funny. If that was Worldcoin, and it could have been, it probably is at the next one. We're in big [ __ ] trouble.

So, Worldcoin affords the state to become even more powerful. Why? because I can the app can centralize all my identity and the EU is working on a project called GlassS that does just this. It's effectively an SBT with IPFS hashes to all my useful data such as my medical records, my visas and so on. All I need to do is collect this to a CBDC or some access where I can revoke my ability to access public services and I'm eating out of bins. It is over for me, right? Um, so as these apps get more important, the worse the decentralized rug button becomes.

And in fact, Worldcoin affords the creation of systems of terror. I mean that by this system and the app that comes on top of it, the primary affordance you need to create a totalitarian state and system of terror is the ability to remove access rights at the push of a button. And that's what this technology creates the ability to do. This is happening. So in the UK, um they're rolling out digital IDs, especially for foreign nationals. Uh the government there was all loveydvey lefty about 6 months ago and now is massively far right. Um and now they're just planning to effectively just add orbs

not far away. WorldCoin turns your Tinder date into an orb operator. This is when I are they really taking the piss now. This is just getting ridiculous. Like it's actually just a real life episode of Black Mirror and people are just watching this and like just lapping it up. I don't get it right. This is too far. This recent mini orbs app which they've managed to reduce the orbs. One of my things. Oh well, if it gets really bad, we can just smash the [ __ ] orbs, right? The problem is that now they live in people's handbags.

Um, and actually what this does is turn your Tinder date, which is explicitly what is depicted in the advert for this, some dude getting orbed by his date, um, as presumably being that you can earn some coins while you're dating on Tinder, right? That's like, what the [ __ ] So, this is even more insidious because WorldCoin manipulates people into scanning. So, a nice basic bribe will do it for most people, but for some, I'm going to need to make basically say, "Oh, right. You're some kind of predator cuz you haven't been orbed on Tinder, right? Do you want this date to happen?

You'd better or um so it takes these existing social dynamics and manipulates them. The whole thing is about are you a human? Well, with the implicit idea that you are subhuman unless you orb. The whole thing is designed to flip you in. Don't you want your likes on Twitter? What affordances does Worldcoin not have? Worldcoin does not stop deep fakes. Nothing could stop me making images like this and putting them on the internet.

Certainly, global prevalence of orbs does not do it. The idea is that, oh, they're deep fakes are bad, right? You must scan. It doesn't solve the problem. Not even close. Yes, the world will turn to slop, but honestly, it won't work. You're just leaving the anyone who's not orbed cannot use your app. That's never going to happen. So, they'll always leave the civil door open anyway, thus leaving it frail to all the previous attack strategies. It doesn't work. You can ban open- source models or every person on the planet or attempt to and it still won't stop deep fakes.

It's already full of sibles who loved the target of this right at the beginning. Villains who thought, "Oh, I can farm eyeballs and earn some coins. I don't know how much of the network is full of literally farmed humans, but I bet it's a lot." So, it's not privacy preserving. They like to use the idea that it's a privacy technology. No, it's not because the privacy collapses at the app layer and you can be docked to hell in there and all that's left is the rug button.

Even more insidiously, they now claim that the iris codes that they've created are their private property. You can't ever have them now. That's no longer your personal private information. It's our technology we've created using your eyeballs. It's ours now. You can't ever have it back. Once you orb, you can't go back. They say this isn't personal private information, but if I come to an app and it knows I've been on there before and can deny me personally from signing up, that's personal private information. So, this is a civil war. It's a war of attrition. The idea of even trying to win this game is a bad idea. Every mo move escalates the game and each one gets more costly and totally [ __ ]

grim. So my argument is that we should not have any civil system that creates this outcome. If anyone's getting farmed for their eyeballs in your game, shut it down. So I've got a couple of minutes left. I'm going to quickly rattle these, but we can fight these without biometrics. We do it with Bitcoin. We burn 2% of the world's energy to build a civil resistance system. That's how difficult this problem is. But you can do it with money and we should explore cryptoeconomic solutions. ZKTLS could be the way that we do this. This is a path to an orbless future and it's the stack I'm most excited about doing this and building a constellation of

authentic human identity is the way that we do it. There's a whole raft of the way that we represent to our world. New data sources, new ways to attest our data. This is a set of data of uh students uh some of my students from a few years ago voting on which project that we should work on together using kind of quadratic voting stuff. And these little like patterns um are like fingerprints for opinion. Um and there's all sorts of like ways that we can drag out information that can prove that you are human. Um the bot problem is a problem. It doesn't mean world clean is the solution. Um, we have something like the cheuring test which

still works. The best way to detect a bot. You've probably thought that's a bot, right? Because you're a human and you can detect bots. So, we should do something like the socialized Turing test to detect each other's individuality. Final thought, we should start trusting more. um this worldcoin is a kind of manifestation of this kind of trustless hard sort of like immutable tool system that's going to solve all our problems when in reality humans are going to human and the reality and trust is a kind of magic spell that we form amongst ourselves that helps us do magic things.

So we should build social networks of trust. This is the endgame for this. It's about finding those solutions. If you're going to work on anything in the next few years, please work on this. Um, quote from Peach who has some brilliant ideas on this. Ident identity is who you are to the people that you know and is inherently a human compute. We need to bring humans back into the mix and allow them to decide what our trust is. So to finish off, extreme solutions lead to extreme outcomes. This is the civil war.

Do not escalate it. stop here. Um, WorldCon has extremely harmful emergent affordances which are incredibly dangerous. Um, we should shut the whole thing down. It can get far worse than it is and that's when the state gets involved which I think is going to happen and that's why I'm out because as soon as this game steps into that arena, I'll now become a geopolitical dissident which I don't fancy. So, I'm out. Um, and we need to build systems that respect and value authentic human identity or they are not solutions.

I advise you to do one thing. Become a conscientious objector. Um, and if you want to summarize this talk for people, it's this. [ __ ] World Coin. Thank you. I'm really a bit scared about Ying Tong being after you like no one no one but that's another go. Uh yeah Mike so uh great talk thank you very much. Uh one question I have is how you feel about I know this is sort of a new technology so you might not be able to say so much about it but I think it's interesting because it's somewhere in between the

things you talked about is circles UBI. Yes. Where uh it has a web of trust model. So, it seems to be kind of in the better direction, but at the same time, I could easily see how you could get farmable, you know, their CRC to earn. Yeah, there's like a mechanism that doesn't try to be perfect civil resistance. So, that seems nice in your framework, but I just wonder what your thoughts on this. It's not a perfect civil resistance. I like circles a lot. I think you should all play with circles. We need to get good at these things. Find why it's good, find why it's bad, so we can get that information back into the mix. I'm sure the teams involved and the community here will help it evolve. But yeah, absolutely.

This is a trust web of trust game explicitly about kind of creating these little microcurrencies as a way to um sort of incentivize the sibles into into uh into making themselves visible, which is very good. Not particularly private um and does kind of like docs quite heavily. uh I would prefer a more private solution but I think it's a good step in the right direction. It's in the in the in the world of of good things that can happen there. Thank you so much for your talk. So I'm Julio. I one of the surrogate mothers of circles. Uh I uh did a lot of intel looking into World Warcoin before and we have to say that it's not just uh like the CEO of

Worldcoin is like a I think like some sort of feudal lord of Altman which is a feud the lord of uh Peter the volunteer and then you have the US government. Yeah. So I just wanted to mention that fact so people know it. And the other thing is um with circles like one reason I started doing other stuff with privacy is to make this type of attestation systems that are privacy preserving because the problem is that orbs run on safes and I'm very scared that they will try to combine them with the circles trust. So if you're here and if you can do something to influence that not happening please do. Yeah, I mean um yeah, be a consc conscientious objector.

Resist it. Um yes, it is part of the uh Ultman industrial complex which is incredibly powerful and scary. It got more scary in the last 24 hours and is just part of the escalation game that is at play. Right. So yeah, there's this is the full force of the technoc capital machine trying to push this into existence. Um, and you can just see it happening, right? It's it's um it's highly adjacent to extremely large power structures, and that is what makes it really really scary in my view. Thanks, Nick. A round of applause.

[Applause] Uh quick note uh I was in my mind there was this idea that this is a sort of Instagrammable talk that