- "The person at the keyboard, is the same person as that ID identifies" is a high expectation, and can probably be avoided—you just need verifiable credentials and you gotta trust they're not spoofed
- Many official government IDs are digital now
- Most architectures for solving this problem involve bundling multiple identity "attestations," so proof of personhood would ultimately be a gradient. (This does, admittedly, seem complicated though ... but World is already doing it, and there are many examples of services where providing additional information confers additional trust. Blue checkmarks to name the most obvious one.)
As for what it might look like to start from the ground up and solve this problem, https://urbit.org/, for all its flaws, is the only serious attempt I know of and proves it's possible in principle, though perhaps not in practice
Various things you're not thinking of:
- "The person at the keyboard, is the same person as that ID identifies" is a high expectation, and can probably be avoided—you just need verifiable credentials and you gotta trust they're not spoofed
- Many official government IDs are digital now
- Most architectures for solving this problem involve bundling multiple identity "attestations," so proof of personhood would ultimately be a gradient. (This does, admittedly, seem complicated though ... but World is already doing it, and there are many examples of services where providing additional information confers additional trust. Blue checkmarks to name the most obvious one.)
As for what it might look like to start from the ground up and solve this problem, https://urbit.org/, for all its flaws, is the only serious attempt I know of and proves it's possible in principle, though perhaps not in practice