Foundations for a Democratic Metaverse (UC Berkeley)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Speaker: Ehud Shapiro (Weizmann Institute and Columbia University)

While our physical lives are mostly in democracies (one person, one vote — e.g., the United States), our digital lives are mostly in autocracies (one person, all votes — e.g., Facebook). Cryptocurrencies promise liberation but stop short at plutocracy (one coin, one vote). What would it take for us to live in a digital democracy?

The key obstacle to digital equality, and hence to digital democracy, is fake and duplicate digital identities, aka Sybils. Facebook eliminates billions of Sybils every quarter, and even if it would have a revelation and decide to go democratic, it is technically unable to. Cryptocurrencies employ plutocratic proof of work (or stake) for lack of a better way to defend against Sybils.

Our aim is to develop from the ground up the theory for a network of autonomous, people-owned, personal-device-operated, democratically governed digital communities, namely a democratic metaverse. This talk will review our progress toward this goal.

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