04-07, 13:40–14:00 (Europe/Zurich), Verge Stage
Encointer is a public blockchain platform for local community cryptocurrencies. Individuals can claim a universal basic income through issuance of fresh money. Money supply is kept in proportion to population size through the use of demurrage. Sybil attacks are prevented by regular, concurrent and randomized pseudonym key signing parties to obtain a proof-of-personhood.
This talk will present the principles of Encointer with a focus on its unique proof-of-personhood protocol and how it enables sybil-resilient universal basic income and democratic governance approximating universal suffrage.
Encointer leverages the fact that a real person can only be in one place at one time. Participants are assigned to gather in randomly assigned groups of 10-15 people and mutually attest each others' personhood. As all gatherings happen at the same time, no human can attend two gatherings for the same cycle.
Encointer runs several community currencies in Zurich, in Tanzania and the USA and is live since 2022. Proof-of-Personhood cycles currently happen every 10 days
Encointer is secured by Polkadot's Canary Network Kusama
Alain Brenzikofer is the founder of Encointer, a specialized Web3 protocol for community-issued income, and a unique digital personhood system. Active in blockchain since 2013, he has led numerous Web3 projects that have received grants from the Web3 Foundation and Polkadot Treasury. In addition to Encointer, Alain has led various projects that combine trusted execution environments (TEEs) and blockchain to improve the privacy and performance of Web3 applications. This includes his contributions to the Quartierstrom peer-to-peer energy markets initiative, his team’s winning entry in the 2020 Energy Web Innovation Challenge, and his work at Integritee, which he co-founded.