I am motivated by the act of acquiring new skills and learning things that I did not know yesterday.

Though the immediately-available market opportunities in crypto are more restricted today than they were a year ago, I still believe that there is an immense opportunity in blockchain-related software development.

Just as I have done for nearly 1.5 years now, I will continue to spend my time writing code and studying crypto dev topics (smart contract development, protocols and surrounding infrastructure, security and auditing, cryptography, etc). Perhaps I’ll even take a full-time job at a crypto company.

There are so many ideas out there which I have yet to study or otherwise be introduced to. Even as the social side of crypto grows more active and larger on a year to year basis, I find that most information remains hidden for longer than you might expect; not completely invisible, but neither is it out in the open.

If you want to connect, you can find me on Twitter and GitHub!

The Proof of Humanity protocol is, as described on their website:

a system combining webs of trust, with reverse Turing tests, and dispute resolution to create a sybil-proof list of humans

In simpler terms, it is a community which seeks to ensure no person can control more than a single account on the platform.

This “one account per human” property allows this community to provide sybil-resistance, and for this reason it is adopted by a variety of other web3 applications as a verification system. For example, verified members of Proof of Humanity receive 50% more matching per dollar contributed during Gitcoin Grants fundraising periods.

There are a variety of other components, including the UBI token which is distributed to all verified humans at a rate of 1.0 UBI per hour.

Members of the protocol can create and/or vote on Humanity Improvement Proposal(s), abbreviated as HIP(s).

HIP-36

Until recently, all Proof of Humanity members have been required to re-submit a new profile registration at least once every 12 months.

With the passing of the Phase 3 Snapshot Vote for HIP-36, this 1-year registration deadline has been doubled to 2 years. This idea was originally suggested by user senryu on the Proof of Humanity Governance Forum, and a proposal was drafted by NingFid (Ning Fidel, a Proof of Humanity moderator and Kleros employee) with additional input from fnanni.

I have been a verified PoH member since mid-2021. Without the implementation of this change, I would be required to submit a new application in 2 months. Thanks to this change, I can wait another year before taking action.

CONCLUSION

The passing of HIP-36 is especially impactful from the standpoint that it will reduce (by 50%) the amount of gas paid by members in order to maintain their memberships over time. Many PoH members receive major economic benefit from the UBI token, and it’s helpful to prevent Ethereum network fees from eating into the UBI reward value.

I didn’t personally vote on any portion of the HIP-36 process. Learning about this proposal after-the-fact is a reminder that I should participate on Snapshot more often and read more governance forums!

FURTHER READING

To learn more about Proof of Humanity, I would recommend starting with the “Proof of Humanity - An Explainer” blog post from Kleros.

You can also learn more within their section of the Kleros docs. The FAQ page is especially helpful for new users.

To learn more about the UBI token, see “Introducing UBI: Universal Basic Income for Humans“ on the Kleros blog.

NOTES ABOUT NFT

I wrote and published this article in order to complete the “Mint an Entry on Mirror“ task on RabbitHole. As a part of this task, the Mirror entry must be minted as an NFT. I do not expect this NFT to be collected, and am simply including the option for task credit.

Instead of purchasing the NFT for this Mirror entry please consider contributing to Proof of Humanity, for example by directly donating to their grant on Gitcoin.

As of publication, the funds recipient address for this NFT has been pointed to the designated grantee address for the Proof of Humanity grant on Gitcoin.