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Join ID Tech Editor in Chief, Alex Perala, and Communications Director, Tony Bitzionis, as they discuss some of the biggest news stories over the past week in biometrics, artificial intelligence, digital ID, and more.
Hello, and welcome to the id talk podcast. I'm Alex Perella. I'm here with my lovely co host, Tony Buzionis. Hello, Tony.
Tony:Hello, Alex.
Alex:And we've got a really interesting conversation today coming up with Terence Kwok, the founder and CEO of Humanity Protocol, which, if you're a regular reader of our site, you probably come across some stories about it. It's, basically, what I would say, one of 2 major, blockchain based biometric digital ID projects. Mhmm. So the idea is to enroll people in this kind of ecosystem through, in this case, through their palm and palm vein biometrics and, give them a digital ID, let them do things like exchange cryptocurrency, and, and it's all on a blockchain ledger. So it's, immutable.
Alex:So pretty similar to to Worldcoin in the concept, or I guess yeah. Now it's called World. I need to get used to that, but that's the Sam Altman, backed rival project, I suppose, that uses weird iris scanning devices to the orbs. Yep. Humanity protocol is a fascinating project in its own right, and Terrence, is a very candid and smart guy, I thought, based on how he came across in our interview.
Alex:So, yeah. He was game to pretty much talk about anything. And, and for that reason, it it became a a great talk, I thought.
Tony:Yeah. It was a fun it was a fun conversation.
Alex:Yeah. So before we get to that, we'll just quickly see if there's any news we wanna highlight. Tony, do you have anything?
Tony:I do. I do. It's a story from a few days ago that I thought was, I don't know, crazy maybe is the right word for it. But, a team of, I don't know, entrepreneurs in quotes, out of South Bend, Indiana developed an app that takes Metas, Ray Bans, smart glasses, and chat gpt and facial recognition technology, and it allows the wearer to get detailed information of strangers just by looking at them. And our readers may recall we reported on something very similar to this about a month ago, and this one was a team of researchers from Harvard who did something very, very similar.
Tony:The big difference being that they explicitly stated they were not developing this as a product. They were more so doing it to draw attention to the dangers that technology like this, you know, smart glasses, AI, and facial recognition when combined with products that are available, you know, in the case of the AI for for free, more or less, and commercially available smart glasses for things like I mean, it's fairly obvious why why this technology could be dangerous. But so they said we're not we're just doing this as a demonstration or sort of a example of why this stuff is, potentially harmful. And then fast forward a month later, and I guess this team of entrepreneurs from South Bend decided that they were developing it as a potential product, and they are doing a trial or a whatever pilot project in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky. I don't know if you're familiar with Rabbit Hash.
Tony:It's a community in Kentucky. It's about 250 people.
Alex:Of course, I know Rabbit Hash.
Tony:Yeah. No. I mean, I I know you summer there, but I just didn't wanna presume. I also didn't wanna dox your summer destination.
Alex:Well, I mean, as soon as people start wearing these glasses, they're gonna know right away.
Tony:Right? And I was thinking I was reading this, and I was thinking, first of all, the first thought that popped in my head was this is like a video game, sort of thing, and it's kind of a textbook use case that people might picture when they hear about facial recognition technology or AI and and smart glasses, and they're like, oh, no. But what if somebody walking down the street can, you know, know everything about me? And it it isn't quite that simple. Right?
Tony:It's not like I don't think it works that way where you can be walking by somebody on the sidewalk, and you'll get all the information off of them. I I don't know. But, like, there are probably uses for something like this that would be handy, like, if you're at a conference, I guess, and you wanna network. But it's also it sounds like an absolute minefield for legal disputes. You know, you do this in Illinois, and you're going to get sued a 150 times in the first hour under BIPA, a handful of other states.
Tony:The the article did go out of its way to say that Indiana doesn't have privacy protection in place that would protect people from something like this, but it's it's quite alarming. I mean, in the hands of police, under the right circumstances, something like that could be helpful, but the the privacy implications for technology like this are insane. And the team that's trialing it in Rabbit Hash said that they are going to or they're they're conducting the trial to then decide whether they're gonna consider a wider deployment. Mhmm. I feel like maybe this thing will get torpedoed before it gets deployed any wider than that, but I'm alarmed and curious by this entire story.
Tony:But I
Alex:think that's a pretty reasonable set of feelings to have about it. Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty, we've we've talked about this kind of thing before, personally. I'm, not that worried about people's information being easily retrievable when they've publicly put it online. So, like, that doesn't bother me personally all that much.
Alex:But if I imagine a world where people are wearing these glasses and every person they see, they also see their 2 latest tweets, the world will be a worse place. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Tony:And, I mean, just think of all the extra conversations you'd have to have with strangers. Like, who wants that? Yeah. Yeah. 1 to keep an eye on.
Tony:Terrifying. Yeah. Absolutely. What do you have to highlight for us this week?
Alex:I have news controversially that we did not cover and might not cover, but it's interesting, and it's kind of relevant. But, yeah, it's not strictly biometrics news. But I do I wanna flag this this news item for people, because I'm a little worried it's gonna continue to fly under the radar. But, salt typhoon is this major hack attack that just recently came to light. And the 1st it came out, and I only like, I don't know that I even noticed this, but there was news that, former president Trump and some people in his circle had their phones hacked, which I think at this stage in the election cycle, I I might have just seen that and shrugged and been like, makes sense.
Alex:But, but, yesterday so we're we're talking right now on November 4th. On the weekend, somebody named Josh Rogan, for a writer for the Washington Post did a a big column just kind of laying out how serious this is. So, basically, what happened, the way these phones were hacked suggests that, the entire, like, cellular infrastructure of the US is vulnerable to hacking. Yeah. And so so, basically, here's how it worked.
Alex:After 911, the telecoms worked with law enforcement to set up backdoors to their networks so that if police had the right kind of warrants, they could ask the networks for access, and they could basically pull people's text messages and even listen to their phone calls, you know, again, as long as they had the right warrant. But the infrastructure was put in place, and this is part of why there was that scandal about the NSA spying program that Edward Snowden, I think it was Snowden, helped to expose. So that was related because they were relying on these these backdoors as well-to-do their spying. They just were doing it without the traditional warrants that you would need. Right.
Alex:But for our purse purposes here, the issue is that those back doors have now been accessed by hackers based in China
Tony:who are affiliated with, like,
Terence:the
Alex:CCP. Right. And so they got access to the networks. And, basically, what it meant is that they could, in theory, look up the texts of any American, who's texting over over a phone network, and they could listen live to phone calls. And, in fact, that's what they did to Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, and some others.
Alex:And then and then it expanded, and this was done to people involved with Kamala's team. And we don't know how many other people are affected. Sweet.
Tony:Sounds great. I'm sure we're just fine up here in Canada.
Alex:Well, I'd like to tell myself that. But, just to give you just to, like, underscore this, there's a quote here that struck out to me in the in the article. Senate intelligence committee chairman Mark Warner said, it is much more serious and much worse than even what you all presume at this point.
Terence:Okay. It is one of
Alex:the most serious breaches in my time on the intelligence committee. And then another person, an anonymous source who was actually one of the victims was talking to this reporter, and he said, right now, China has the ability to listen to any phone call in the United States. Whether you're the president or a regular Joe, it makes no difference. So Right.
Tony:Well, that's good. I guess letters? Go back
Alex:to They The good news is it seems like encrypted messaging, like
Alex:Imessage, if you have an iPhone or if you use signal or WhatsApp or whatever, it should be exempt. It's just when people are doing this over the phone network, they're vulnerable.
Tony:I I I've I've heard a lot of, over the course of the last several years or months, let's say months, various experts pointing out that using cellular networks, using text messages, to communicate is mostly a North American thing. That Europeans and people in Asia, they use WhatsApp. They use different services. They don't use their cellular networks. No.
Tony:And this wasn't usually, it was framed in the context of the whole green bubble, blue bubble iPhone thing and Google trying to get in there with, their new protocol. But, I mean, that's, I guess, a good illustration of why it might be better to not use your cellular network, especially now.
Alex:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good takeaway. And, of course, you know, don't, like, don't share passwords.
Alex:Don't share identity credentials, over text, or even on a phone call, apparently. Like, that's
Tony:not Yeah.
Alex:So Yeah. I mean, like, is anyone gonna actually, like, target me so that in case I share my Netflix password with my friends, they can intercept it? Like, that doesn't matter. But Yeah. You know, if you're if you're working with really sensitive information and you're the kind of person who might be targeted Yeah.
Alex:Then you need to start using signal immediately, I guess. Yeah.
Tony:Well, now that we've torpedoed our Verizon and T Mobile Suite sponsorship dollars, I guess, if you don't mind, because you you change your Netflix password a lot, and it's kind of annoying. Can you just, like, send me a letter with the new one, please?
Alex:Yeah. I'll post it, tomorrow morning. I think the mail's okay. I'm new from my phone.
Tony:I'll tell my my mail carrier to keep keep an eye out.
Alex:Right. And with that, shall we move on to our chat with Terrence?
Tony:Yeah. Let's talk to Terrence.
Alex:Alright. We're, very happy to be joined now by Terrence Kwok, the founder and CEO of Humanity Protocol. So, Terence, welcome to the show. We're really happy you have some time to talk with us about this.
Terence:Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks for, having me. You know, happy to talk a little bit about myself, what we do, and some my name is Terrence, based out of Hong Kong. I was born in the US. I grew up in Hong Kong.
Terence:Was always in the tech sector as as an entrepreneur. Started my first company when I was 19, in the travel and hospitality space. Ran that for almost a decade, and then essentially had to shift gears, during COVID because travel was not the best industry to be in. Started working on identity and humanity protocol probably around 2 years ago, and then really started really focusing on it, around a year, year and a half ago. The the thesis for us is very simple.
Terence:We think that, you know, identity is important. Identity is a human right. Right now, much of anybody's identity information, is owned by third parties, whether it's big tech companies, your banks, etcetera, etcetera. We actually think, you know, you should take control of it. I think when it comes to sort of the blockchain space, identity has always been identified as one of the key use cases.
Terence:I think back since, you know, the the the 2016, 2017 days, a lot of people, a lot of companies have been trying to do, something related to identity on the blockchain. Not too many have actually succeeded. In fact, you know, I don't think anybody's really been able to, have something that takes off that has taken off. And, we're trying to sort of do that. Right?
Terence:And one of the key things that we're focusing on is, is something called proof of humanity. So I we we we think of a human being as having many different attributes. It could be, you know, where you went to school. It could be your, where you where you go to work. It could be your, your PII.
Terence:Right? Like, your name, nationality, you know, different sort of, pieces of information about you. And then one of the more fundamental ones, is, you know, the fact that you're a human being. Right? And, I think this is something that probably until 2 years ago, no nobody really thought too much about, because, hey.
Terence:You know what? Proving that you're a human being doesn't seem to be a necessary thing. I think over the last 2, 3 years, it's become very apparent that that's actually probably one of the key attributes that needs to be proven. If you look online world right now, whether it's, like, deep fake videos, fraudulent phone calls where people pretend to be, you know, your mother's voice. Different sort of things.
Terence:Right? We're we're seeing that actually proof of humanity is becoming more important. And then obviously, you know, the ability for you to own, your own information, your own data for all the other attributes as a human being, is also super important. Right? So that's what we're trying to enable with humanity protocol.
Terence:The project we actually have as I said, we've been working on it for, for just over a year, has been in in development for for for for for quite a while. We've recently launched our test net. So, I think beginning of this month, we launched our test net for the, for the blockchain network. We've hit, you know, half a 1000000 people in, just under a month. So, literally, we hit half a 1000000, I think, a couple hours ago.
Terence:Mhmm. So that was that was quite nice. The the goal for us is to enable humanity protocol and proof of humanity for all 8,000,000,000 people in the world.
Alex:Alright. That's ambitious, and, impressive. I think one thing I wanna, like, focus on from what you were just saying is our a lot of our listeners will be, you know, very familiar with identity, like, authentication, that kind of thing. But, like you said, it's not, Nobody has really thought too much about is this even a human being that we are interacting with, until pretty recently, like you were just saying. So it's it's you're solving not only authentication in terms of these are the attributes that we can confirm that belong to this person, but also this is also a person.
Alex:Like, this is actually a human being.
Terence:It's actually a person. And and I think it's it's it's becoming even more important now. Right? Because if you think about a lot of the online authentication systems and mechanisms, right, it's relying on you to provide some sort of information that is now becoming easier and easier to fake.
Alex:Mhmm.
Terence:Right? You try to KYC for a digital bank account. What do they ask you? They ask you for sort of a video of yourself, your face. Super easy to fake right now.
Terence:Asking you for, you know, sort of a proof of address and bank statement. Super easy to doctor right now. So we actually think it's it's becoming important to, to prove whether you're gonna be being or not, whether it's for security purposes or even just in general. Right? When we look at a lot of industries, the value lies with humans.
Terence:You know? You you, you know, you look at the technology world where, 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars are being spent on digital advertising. Right? It's a bigger market. It's a bigger market than, you know, offline and both line.
Terence:Advertising digital digital media, you have a problem as a you have a problem as an advertiser if you're being targeted by a bunch of bots. Right? You're just throwing money and not getting any sort of return. Right? So there is interest.
Terence:It is important to be able to check whether somebody is a human being or not. And one of the key one of the interesting things is if you notice, when we we are, using online services in the last 2 years, you know, almost every single time you go to a website or whatnot, it's like verifying that you're a human. Right? Or, you know, like, it's asking you for a bunch of CAPTCHAs, picking up the traffic lights, picking up the cats, dogs, all sorts of different things. You know, it's it's super important, and nobody's really found, an elegant solution to that.
Terence:And I think as sort of technology becomes more advanced, frankly, the only way to actually check whether you're a human being or not is actually through sort of biometric solutions.
Alex:Right. Yeah. So we on that note, we should kinda just outline how humanity protocol works. Like, how would you how do you explain it to people who aren't in this space at all? Who aren't in the blockchain space or who
Terence:aren't in sort of the identity space? Or both?
Alex:I or both. Yeah. Like, people like, just some random person. How would you explain what you
Terence:Random person. Right? I mean, I I I don't do a good job at that because I I think, you know, I still haven't been able to convince my mom what I'm I'm doing. But I think the the simplest is that in the as I said, right, in the online world, it's really difficult to differentiate humans from non nonhumans. What we're trying to do to solve that is, the we we think the only way to do that is actually through biometrics because many parts of a human body, by nature, are unique.
Terence:Right? So, some of the common things that are unique, obviously, your fingerprint is unique. People are pretty familiar with that. Your iris is unique. There are solutions out there that are trying to use that for proof of personhood or proof of human, because they try to avoid using the proof of humanity word.
Terence:And then in our case, what we're doing is we're using the person's palm. Right? And then, in terms of the palm, there are actually two components to it. There is the, the surface, which is your palm prints, okay, which is, like, the patterns and the creases that you see. Right?
Terence:The lines the big ones that you can see and the small ones that, like, are not so obvious, slightly more subtle. Right? Those patterns don't really change over the course of your life, and it's unique to every single person in the world. The second part of it is actually your veins. So the veins underneath your skin on your hand, again, it's a lot of small little lines of blood vessels and whatnot where it sits under your skin.
Terence:You can't really see it. We do need dedicated hardware to be able to, to sort of capture it. But, you know, together both with both the palm print and your palm veins, registering that, encrypting it, we can actually know for a fact whether you are somebody that already exists on the ledger or not. Right? And we can pretty much guarantee that you are a unique human being.
Alex:Right. And that data gets, put into, like, basically, a digital ID on this platform.
Terence:That that information gets encrypted, and then a credential is issued Right. On humanity protocol. Yes. And I guess are a unique human being.
Alex:Yeah. But I guess the the distinction being, the credential doesn't say anything about who you are. It's just like this is an entity.
Terence:The credential credential doesn't say anything about who you are. But the idea with us is that we are issuing decentralized IDs where you can have other credentials, tied in that might say who you are. Right? But that information still, nobody would have access to unless you give somebody access to it. Right.
Tony:I just wanna pick up on something you just mentioned, the concept or the idea of decentralized identity has really been picking up a lot of steam over the last, I guess, you could say the last few years, but certainly over the last year. Just wanted to get your your take on why you think that is. I mean, Alex and I are in the identity industry, the biometrics industry, and we write about this stuff all the time. But, what's your kind of read on that?
Terence:So it's it's really interesting. Right? Like, I feel like in terms of, like, decentralized ID or the ability like, decentralized ID is actually something that people have been thinking about and researching for decades. You know? Like, it's funny.
Terence:I was talking to to somebody, about this, and he was actually researching this back when he was doing his PhD back in the eighties. And then he was actually he was part of, I'm not gonna name which one, but he was part he was part of a big research lab trying to figure out how to do identity, outside the context of, you know, nation states. Right? So, like, that whole thing, people have been thinking about how you how do you deal with that. Right?
Terence:Or even, like, in the context of failed nation states where you know, how do you issue IDs to how do you issue IDs to, you know, a country without a stable government. Right? So so people have been thinking about this. I think in the digital context over the last couple years, I think the proliferation for, for blockchain applications has come to you know, that that's one thing. Right?
Terence:Where you actually can have soft debts decentralized, where it's permissionless, where nobody can actually take away from you. Right? Until then, prior to this, anything, if it's in digital world, had to be sitting in some sort of centralized server, which means that somebody could pull the plug. So it's not that decentralized. Right?
Terence:I think technology has allowed this to happen. And then I think the other thing is also there's there's just sort of a growing frustration for for a lot of people whereby, you know, they're they're producing a lot of data, but they're not really owning that data. Right? And all that data is going to, you know, Zuck or, you know, some other for them to monetize. I think that's sort of second thing.
Terence:And then I think, as I said also, right, like, the whole AI AI sort of narrative is making people realize that, okay. You know what? Suddenly, there's now talk about AI agents. Right? Like like another form of intelligent being, that can also do things, at least in the online world for now.
Terence:Right? So so how do we actually differentiate between an AI agent and and and a human being? How do we at least you know, if we can differentiate, how do we make sure that, you know, these individuals, you know, we can we can we can ascertain their attributes, who they are, etcetera, etcetera. Hence, I think, you know, it's it's that's why it's sort of, becoming a more important, problem to solve.
Alex:Yeah. I think that makes
Tony:oh, sorry, Tony. I was gonna say that makes that that makes a lot of sense to me personally because, going back to what you were saying, you know, your mom doesn't even know what you do. We joke a lot on the show how trying to explain even, like, the most basic, ideas behind digital identity and biometrics to our family and friends, you kind of it's it's not easy. Right? I mean, you don't wanna bore them, but you also wanna get across how important it is and how its importance is growing, the idea of authentication, verification, and proof of humanity.
Tony:And it hasn't really been that long, or sorry. Let me rephrase that. It's only been in the last few months with all the, like, the proliferation of AI and how incredibly scary, deepfakes are getting that it's become much easier to, you know
Terence:Absolutely. In the last couple months, Super easy to actually explain to people why you Right. Need to figure out. Like, I mean, as simple as the fact that, you know, I think I don't know about Canada, but at least from where I am, there are fraud calls and people pretending other people all the time.
Tony:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Terence:The phone, it it's like, you know, you pick up the phone and then somebody sounds like somebody you know. Right?
Tony:I have
Terence:That stuff is happening more and more.
Tony:My my parents are old. They don't listen to the show, so they won't be offended, and Greek, and English is not their first language. And I've always been very cautious about them answering spam calls.
Terence:Right.
Tony:But over the last few months, more so, to my mother, I've just been like, just don't answer. Don't answer. If it's not your sister or it's not one of us, just don't pick up the phone. It's not gonna be worth it. Like, they'll find a way to get in touch with you if it's something important.
Terence:I know you do that. Right? Like, very, very soon, unfortunately, unfortunately, given that you're you're, you know, a sort of a a public or semi public figure, super easy to get hold of your image and your voice.
Tony:Right? Right.
Terence:You know? Yeah. I I could be recording now, and I could really just create a video of you saying whatever the hell I want you to say. Right? Super easy.
Alex:You have you have
Tony:my permission for that. It's I say a lot of stupid things.
Terence:So so so it it's it's it's it's becoming really, really important. Right? Like, you look at that recent case of, like, those kids in Miami that stole, like, $200,000,000. Right? You would expect that somebody who has $200,000,000 of Bitcoin to be reasonably smart.
Terence:And, you know, somehow through pretending to be Google, pretending to be this, pretending to be that, somehow manage this order. Right? I recently ran into a very close call where, somebody pretended somebody hacked into the account, the Telegram account of a friend of mine, who actually runs a big, pretty prominent French capital fund. Okay? And, you know, she pinged me and said, hey.
Terence:How's it going? Let's catch up. Haven't spoken for a couple months. Right? And then tried to do a bunch of stuff.
Terence:And then it just so and it all seems super real. It just so happened that there was a site glitch with, you know, my my my my my laptop and whatnot. And then I actually tried to reach out, but then I couldn't reach her. So then I actually called her on WhatsApp, okay, where I have her phone number, and then she's like, dude, I have no idea what you're talking about. It's not me.
Terence:Right? My account actually got hacked a couple days ago. Sorry for this. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, it it really complicate
Tony:The stakes are much higher than when you would get an email from someone in your address book, and it would just be, like, obviously very obviously not them. You'd be like, oh, you know, George's email got hacked again. Let me just let him know. Now you just you have
Alex:to be so on your toes. But even setting setting, like, fraud aside, it and just the growing importance of, like, knowing you're talking to a human. I was thinking about that, like I don't know. Was it a week ago that, Anthropic launched their, like, data version of computer use, where it just Mhmm. The AI takes over your computer and can just do things for you.
Alex:And, like, it's pretty, it's just in beta. It's not super sophisticated yet, but I was thinking about what that's gonna look like. Like, pretty soon it's gonna be a little bot that lives on your computer, and it's like you, like, send an email to so and so, and it's, like, composing it. And it's easy to imagine getting emails from what seems like a person working at a company, and, like, they're not a person. It's just a AI assistant that's, like, has the ability to just, like, follow orders and email people and interact.
Alex:So just, like, on a human level, I would I would like to know whether I'm talking to a
Terence:Yeah. Absolutely. Like, if you absolutely. Right? Like, if you look at customer service now, right, it it's super easy to at this point, you know, I've investments in some other companies and whatnot, and there's a Fintech company that I I'm I've invested in, and now they're investigating.
Terence:You know, they're taking all the all the historical answers and all the, all the data of of conversations between the agents, customer service agents, and the clients, throwing it into LLM. And then now there's a chatbot that emulates Yeah. Answering essentially 95% of questions that are generally being asked. Right? But in a very, human like way.
Terence:So I I I think this this like, being able to tell, like, that it's human is is super important. And then beyond that, you know, in in a lot of different use cases, being able to tell who it is, is actually also super important.
Alex:Yeah. So but going back to your like, how humanity protocol works, you you use palm biometrics and, I guess, palm vein biometrics. But you said that that that requires, like, special hardware. So how does how are you gonna get everybody enrolled? Like, how exactly is that, it's gonna be
Terence:I mean, we are gonna we're we're gonna be launching a network of devices, all around the world starting December. We, the first sort of batch of devices we already have on hand, we were demoing it in, in a conference probably, like, a month ago. A month ago, people were like, this is amazing. And then we are we are planning to actually start rolling them out in December, January, and February. Oh, okay.
Terence:The target is is to have Mhmm. A pretty wide distribution, so that, you know, people can can can go do their enrollment, right, or or or or activation. The other thing that's interesting with sort of palm based, biometrics, I think, is that I think it's it's it's number 1, it's contactless. Okay? So from a hygiene perspective, it's great.
Terence:But then beyond that, it's also relatively natural and, it's relatively natural and, nonintrusive. And so it's it also becomes a pretty interesting thing for, for offline use cases. Right? So the idea is that maybe whether it's for payments and, you know, obviously, Amazon is already using, the palm for payments in, in the US. 10¢ doing that in China.
Terence:Right? So so using your palm for payments is interesting. Using it for, access control, you know, whether it's in your office, your conference room, music festival, a concert, an event, whatever it is. These are interesting use cases. Right.
Terence:So so that that's that's sort of how we think about it.
Alex:Okay. And, and I guess you that this would involve people, like, going to, like, an enrollment center of some kind or something. It's not like they have to go and buy a device that will then, like
Terence:So we, the idea for us is that they would probably go into, enrollment center or not necessarily an enrollment center. Like, the the way we think about it is actually partnering with a lot of sort of different places where it kind of people naturally congregate. Like, an example would be, like, universities. Okay? So we're in discussions with a number of different universities all around the world, on on this.
Terence:And then the other thing is also, we do we are going to launch a form factor next year, early next year, where it's a small little device that you can plug into your own phone.
Alex:Oh, okay. Cool.
Terence:So it's a it's a so we call the the yeah. So we have we have a terminal, and then we also have a dongle.
Alex:Okay. I also wanted to ask about some of the more, like, Web 3 crypto stuff because that isn't really our area of expertise. We we cover it because there's so much overlap with identity technology. But, you mentioned earlier that you guys just launched a test net. I think a lot of listeners would be confused about what that means.
Alex:So can you explain that?
Terence:Essentially, Humanity protocol is actually a blockchain. Okay? So we are actually a blockchain. And, you know, when we look at all the different blockchains that exist out there, you know, Bitcoin sits on the blockchain. Ethereum is a blockchain.
Terence:Solana is a blockchain. Right? And then there are a whole host of, blockchains out there. Right? Some blockchains are trying to be general purpose blockchains.
Terence:There are blockchains that are focused on, you know, being blockchains for games, blockchains for content, blockchains for IP, different sort of things. We don't necessarily see ourselves as a blockchain for identity. We see ourselves as a general purpose blockchain where there are identity function at there is identity functionality baked in. Okay? And what I mean by that is we one of the key interesting part well, one of the key parts of the blockchain ecosystem is that, generally, interactions with blockchain are largely anonymous, or at least pseudo anonymous.
Terence:Right? So there's a wallet address. It's completely transparent. You can see what's going on with that address, but you don't know who it is. Right?
Terence:So that's generally the case. What we are trying to do with humanity protocol is that we're we're launching a a blockchain where it's still pseudo anonymous. You don't know who it is. But there is inherent functionality to be able to check whether an address is a verified human being or not. Mhmm.
Terence:Okay? And that is actually super important, especially nowadays, because when we look at the blockchain ecosystem, most blockchains have a token that's tied to it for, for gas fees or whatnot. There's something called airdrops in the blockchain space where people like to give up free money for, for for getting users on board and all that sort of stuff. Like, essentially, blockchain protocols are very, close to very closely associated with capital. Let's put it this way.
Terence:Right? And so the way we think about this is that it's important, for us to be able to differentiate, not necessarily between humans and AI agents, but even just humans and bots. Right? A human being who's controlling a 100000 different wallet addresses. And it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for people to do a lot of botting in the web 2 space, in the traditional technology space because there is not much value to it.
Terence:Right? Like, yes, you can go open a 100,000 Facebook accounts, but what do you get out of that? Probably not much. Whereas if you go create a 100,000 blockchain addresses and start doing transactions and start trying to farm airdrops and all that sort of stuff, It it's a real business. There are people who make 1,000,000 of dollars doing that.
Terence:Right? And, at the cost of, you know, other users and at the cost of the entire ecosystem. And so the ability for us to actually differentiate whether an address is a human being or not is super important. And then the other thing also is that, historically, people talk about how, blockchain has not has at much as much adoption as the industry would like because of 3 things mainly. Because of terrible user experience, because of costs, you know, like, it's expensive to, to make transactions.
Terence:And then the third thing is speed. Right? So in our our philosophy is that all three of these things, yes, needs to be solved in order for the decentralized world, to play a bigger role, of everybody's life. But from our perspective, even if you solve for all these problems, the proliferation of bots and AI agents will just screw everything up anyways. Right.
Terence:In in the sense that if you think about a blockchain where, you know, if right now, you know, Ethereum can handle a handful of transactions per second. But imagine a blockchain now that somebody is trying to to create that can do a 100,000 transactions a second. But it doesn't really matter even if you have a 100,000 transactions a second in terms of throughput. If, you know, somebody like Tony could just rip, you know, whip up a script, pretend to be a 100,000 different accounts, and start sending transactions through that Right? In fact, if you make it cheaper, it's even easier for him to do that.
Terence:Right? So what we're trying to do is build a native functionality to humanity protocol so that we're the first blockchain where there is prioritization of transaction, for example. You know, you can still use this blockchain if you are not a verified human being, but you sit in one queue. If you are a human being, there's gonna be another queue, whereby your transactions are potentially cheaper and faster.
Alex:Mhmm. Okay. This is this is illuminating for, like, how blockchain works, but then what it like, is the test net what it sounds like, which is just to literally
Terence:The test net is the test net is what we call generally in in terms of, like, blockchains. There is what we call test net and then main net. Main net is, like, the real thing. Test net is, like, beta, like, where people where people can already use it. People can play around with it and sign up.
Terence:People can interact with it. People can do all sorts of different things. Developers can start building, initial prototypes of their applications on top of it, but it's not really the real thing yet. Right? It's like a beta version, to test it out.
Terence:Right? So we launched our I'm sorry?
Alex:Like a sandbox environment sort of.
Terence:Like a like a sandbox environment. Exactly. Right? So we've launched our test net, and then we're planning to launch our main net in the next month or 2.
Alex:Did did you say earlier that you got, like, half a 1000000 people signed up for the test net?
Tony:That's what I was asked.
Alex:Yeah. We we
Tony:wrote about the launch at the beginning of this month, and it was I think the headline was, like, 25,000,
Terence:25,000 in, like, a day or 2.
Tony:Yeah. That's incredible. When you said that, I was like, whoop. That's pretty cool.
Terence:Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's like half a1000000. And then, you know, our our the blockchain went down for, for a couple days. And, you know, blockchains are not supposed to go down, but this is our test net.
Terence:And so we're tweaking stuff and fixing things and improving and whatnot. Like, there was so much traffic that it just went down. You know? So so that that's what testnets are for, essentially.
Tony:Right. Yeah.
Alex:That's a good problem.
Tony:Yeah. Exactly. Something else that we
Terence:offer better than definitely better than, you know, us sitting around twiddling our fingers trying to figure out next when the third person's gonna come on board.
Alex:Yeah.
Tony:Yeah. Yeah. Something that we also end up talking a lot about, and writing a lot about aside from, identity verification, is is privacy and regulatory, compliance and stuff like that. And just curious, like, how does that landscape because it's constantly evolving and it varies from country to country and continent to continent. How does that I
Terence:think there there needs to be, like, there needs to be a I think most of the governments and most of the most of the regulatory frameworks were designed, in mind to regulate companies like Facebook and Google.
Alex:Mhmm.
Terence:Right? So the from our perspective, we're not we're not a centralized company where I'm collecting your data. Right. And if you actually wanna prove that you are Canadian on humanity protocol, we will never have access to that information. We don't have if you sign up for test that, you have to sign you have to put in your in you have to put in your email.
Terence:We don't have access to that email. Mhmm. Okay? It's actually encrypted, and we ask for you we have to ask for your permission in order to actually see that email. Right?
Terence:So from a technological perspective, I think the we look at sort of the regulatory frameworks. They're not necessarily designed for sort of decentralized infrastructure. Right? I I think from their from from some of the government's perspectives, oh, since you're facilitating the collection of data, it means that you must be storing it. And it must be it must mean that you're doing something bad with it.
Terence:Right? Which, in that case, it's not. Right? Like, it's it's it's we're facilitating the collection of it. It's going into decentralized storage.
Terence:It's encrypted. You have the keys. Right? So so I think part of it is is an education process, and then part of it is also, just working within the existing framework to ensure that we're doing right by, you know, the people that we, we bring on board.
Alex:Yeah. It does seem like, because so the only 2 companies that I really regularly see doing this approach to decentralized identity is you and Worldcoin, and I or or I guess it's called World now. And World is like every other article I come across about them is they're being sued or investigated by some sort of, like, regulatory body. Whereas, like, you guys, I I haven't seen anything like that for Humanity.
Terence:I mean, we're we're we're way we're way younger and way smaller, and then I am far less important as an individual as Sam right? So, you know You're
Tony:on this show and he's not, so we disagree.
Terence:You know, so so so, you know, I I I I I, you know, I I think they're they're they're doing a lot to, they're they're doing a lot to ensure, you know, data and information is privacy preserving also from from my my understanding. Right? So so I want them to succeed. I want ourselves to succeed. We obviously wanna kind of beat them.
Terence:They're at, like, around, I think, 7,000,000 people after a year and a half. We're at, like, half a 1000000 after, like, a couple weeks. So Yeah. We'll see. We'll see.
Terence:But, like, I think the the key thing is that, as you guys mentioned. Right? Like, different governments, different places, they have different sort of regulatory frameworks. Most of them were designed in place to regulate essentially Google and Facebook, not so much sort of decentralized networks. And, you know, that's that's also why it becomes really interesting.
Terence:Right? Like, not even in the identity space. You look at some of the other things, in the blockchain space. It's it's not really clear. Right?
Terence:Because, for example, if you you're not supposed to go run an exchange or you're not or you're not supposed to go run an exchange. But then does you know, if you're not running an exchange, but then, you know, you just produce code that automatically sits in a decentralized world and people can trade on it, are you actually running an exchange? Mhmm. Who's running the exchange? Is it the validators?
Terence:Is it the engineers who build it? Nobody really knows. Right? Like, it's it's really hard to say. You look at sort of, like, the whole thing with, like, you know, Tornado Cash.
Terence:Right? Obviously, the guy got in trouble for, for producing and launching Tornado Cash. He just wrote some code. And, sure, that code that piece of code facilitates money laundering, but that piece of code was written in, you know, Solidity and launched on Ethereum. Is Ethereum facilitating money laundering?
Terence:Right? Is AWS facilitating laundering? Because, you know, most of validators have their nodes running on AWS. So it's I I I feel like it's it's it's it's not an easy question to, it's not an easy question to answer.
Alex:Yeah. It reminds me of, a few months ago, I I remember there was a deep fake scam connected to the election where it was like a voice that sounded like Biden robocalling people with misinformation. And I believe I would have to double check this, but I believe that the the phone company ended up getting in trouble for allowing the robocalls to happen through its network. And that surprised me.
Terence:It it no. It's it's it's and some governments are becoming like that. I could tell you that, for example, in the UK, I've invested in Fintech companies. If you actually get scammed if you get scammed and you send some money out, okay, the onus is on the back. Right?
Terence:And it it could be like, forget about, like, hey. You know what? If somehow, Alex, your your account, you're, like, sending, I don't know, like, a $1,000,000 out and the bank didn't stop it or actually ask you the reasons why, etcetera, etcetera. Sure. I can kinda understand.
Terence:Right? But if you get scammed out of $1200, right, and a lot of people get scammed out of $1200 Mhmm. It's still on the bank's fault. And, you know, it starts becoming more a sort of philosophical issue. Right?
Terence:Or or whether there's overregulation or whether, you know, like, you know, in the name of consumer protection, like, great. Consumer protection is great. But how do you how do you how do you start protecting protecting everybody against all of this stuff? Right? Like, if you are, you know, 65 years old and you're not familiar with technology, you pick up the phone, you hear your son's voice.
Terence:You know? Like, how do you deal with that? Right? Like, you hear your son's voice saying, hey. You know what?
Terence:That send me send me $2,000. Like like do you know what I'm saying? Like, it's it's it's really so, so I I don't think there is a clear clear way to solve this. And I think the other problem is that technology is moving at such a fast pace. Mhmm.
Terence:Right? That's why you also see right? Like, as you mentioned, like, somebody like Jeffrey Hinton, talking about how, you know, AI regulation, you know, it's it's it's safety for for AI. You know, all of these things are are becoming more and more important.
Alex:Yeah. I know that, like, you're you're it's pretty late where you are. You're in a different time zone than us, but, so we don't wanna keep you too much longer. But I did wanna ask also about, because your project sort of, like, lives in the web 3 space now. But it sounds like, ultimately, the goal is to get it like, get a lot of people using it, whether they're into web 3 tech or, you know so how like, what would that look like?
Terence:Like So I I yeah. So I I think that that's a very good question, and we're already starting to do that. So we have some pretty interesting announcements coming out soon where, we will be working with, companies in the offline world, even some, you know, higher higher education institutions. You know? And, and the whole idea is that for us, as I mentioned, right, we're building humanity protocol not just for proof of humanity, but actually almost something called, like, proof of human identity.
Terence:Right? So the the idea is that it could be many different attributes. And so, for example, one of the things that you might wanna prove is not just now that you've proven that, you know, we've proven that, you know, Alex is a human being, one thing that we also might wanna prove is that he's a Canadian citizen. We might actually also wanna prove that he can drive. Okay?
Terence:We might actually also wanna prove that you went to this university. Right? And so one of the things that we're starting to, to discuss with some university partners, is the ability for them to actually issue graduation certificates and transcripts directly onto the blockchain in a similar manner. Right? So that down the road, imagine you just graduated from school, and instead of your employer having to do a background check, call up the university, ask you to produce a physical copy of the transcript, which you could easily fake anyways.
Terence:Now the university issues a, call it, verifiable credential where, you know, on the blockchain, immutable says that you actually did go to school and you graduated with, you know, this GPA, with this major and minor. Right? So these are things, that are gonna be important. And the way we're we're we're trying to make this is that the user experience entirely for somebody who doesn't really care will not really know that it's actually all done on the blockchain. Mhmm.
Terence:Right? It should be a super easy user friendly mobile application, almost like your, you know, your Apple Wallet. Right? You don't really know how the cards work, how it's it's it's, you know, like, it's it's, you know, how how the payment network works or any of this stuff. But you just know that you can tap your card and pay.
Terence:Right? So in the same thing, you can just show, you know, this and, you know, some sort of magic happens to make sure that, okay. You know what? This credential is really issued by the University of Toronto, and we can prove that this person did go to that school. Right?
Terence:So these are some of the use cases we're doing. And earlier, I mentioned, right, like, with access control, with your palm. So we are actually also gonna be starting with, working with conferences, events, to roll this, service out. Right? So, there's gonna be, you know, 1 or 2 sort of conferences, predominantly right now in in the crypto space, but, you know, it doesn't really have to be, down the road, but, like, where where people could actually sign up.
Terence:You know, they they go buy their ticket, but, instead of having the, the ticket, be a QR code or some sort of piece of paper that they have to show at the door, it's issued as credential on humanity protocol. And then if you have your, if you have your palm scanned already, you can actually directly access the, the event just by scanning your palm. Right? So some some of these things, we are working through, but the core goal is to make sure that the user experience is indistinguishable from, from any, you know, easy to use, mobile application.
Alex:Yeah. That's, I mean, like, I'll be very interested to see all of that materialize. Like, this is Yeah. Genuinely, this is, like, one of the most interesting projects that is underway in the kind of identity space that we cover. So, I we're really excited to see where you go from here.
Alex:So, thank you for, like, talking to us about it and making the time, and hopefully, we can catch up with you again.
Tony:Thank you so much, man. Thanks for your time, and, this was great. Thanks, Alex. Thanks, Tony.