Polkadot's Gavin Wood Unveils Game-Changing Human Verification Plan at Web3 Summit!

Hold onto your hats, crypto fans! Polkadot's mastermind Gavin Wood just dropped a bombshell at the Web3 Summit 2025 in Berlin on July 17th. He spilled the beans on his audacious plan to tackle identity verification head-on in the wild world of AI!

Wood didn't hold back, diving deep into the concept of Proof of Personhood (PoP) and how Polkadot's gonna roll it out to the masses. PoP? Yeah, it's the real deal – a personalized powerhouse that'll shake up decentralized human verification on-chain. Buckle up, folks!

Get ready for Polkadot's Individuality system to launch this beast! We're talking DIM1, aka Proof of Individuality, and DIM2, the slick Proof of Verified Individuality. Wood's keeping the exact launch date under wraps, but he did let slip that PoP's gonna hit the scene with a bang, backed by a hefty $3 million treasury proposal. Cha-ching!

But wait, there's more! Polkadot's PoP is gonna make its grand entrance with what Wood calls "the fairest airdrop ever." You heard that right, folks – the fairest. Ever.

During his electrifying keynote on day one of the summit, Wood laid it all out: he's on a mission to use Proof of Personhood to crush those pesky on-chain identity challenges. And trust me, in this era of AI going bonkers, telling human accounts from AI bots is getting tougher by the minute.

Wood's not messing around. He's calling Polkadot's PoP a foundational web3 primitive that'll beef up sybil resistance and slash network security costs across the board. And get this – it's a direct shot at those vulnerable old-school identity systems like CAPTCHAs, SMS, and KYC, all crumbling under the weight of AI-generated clones.

Trust and Decentralized Identity in an AI-Laden World

Over at the Web3 Summit's "Trust" panel, things got real. Ian Grigg, the big brain behind Ricardian Contracts, laid down the law: trust ain't just about tech, people!

Grigg's not buying it – he says trust is all about us humans. It's messy, emotional, and context-driven. You can't just code that stuff!

And machines? Forget it. They can't feel the human vibes that make trust what it is. Grigg's calling it: AI shouldn't even try to fake these feelings. Why? Because "automating trust" through machines is a recipe for disaster – fragile, insecure systems all around.

But here's the kicker: trust and identity? They're like peanut butter and jelly. You can't have one without the other. And to really trust something, you gotta know who or what you're dealing with, based on good ol' human insight, not just fancy code.