I think I'm going to write about this soon too, but I'd love to to read more about how you think a system like this could work. If you don't mind me saying, you're a little light on details 😜

For example, there's nothing in your idea to prevent someone from simply claiming to be someone else and their buddies could vouch for them, which that would be enough to establish trust. But this is clearly not based on anything real about a person, which is what we're trying to verify.

The usual way banks or government agencies use to verify someone is who they say they are is with a combination of their name, their signature, their state ID number (social security number) and perhaps proof of this (such as a card), and proof of address, which could be a couple of recent utility bills in the name of the person, or even something mailed out to them as a verification step.

This is clunky, takes time, and does not take into account the variety of situations people can find themselves in (not having directly paid a bill in the last three months for example), being homeless or itinerant, or not having a name (!?).

So in my opinion we're looking for something that beats this in terms of usability, but also works well to establish identity.