Why Proof-of-Contribution Must Be Sybil-Proof to Have Meaning

The economic design of most airdrops and points programs makes Sybil farming the rational choice, not genuine contribution. This creates a perverse incentive structure that rewards capital, not work.

• >50% of airdrop wallets are estimated to be Sybil in major campaigns.
• Real users are diluted, receiving less value for their actual engagement.
• Protocols waste >$1B+ in incentives annually on empty, extractive activity.

Move beyond single-protocol snapshots to persistent, composable identity graphs. Systems like Gitcoin Passport, Worldcoin, and Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) create a cost to forge a meaningful history.

• Sybil resistance via cost aggregation: Combining multiple proofs (POAPs, governance votes, social) raises attack cost.
• Composable reputation: A verified graph from one dapp can be a trust input for another, creating network effects.
• Shifts reward from wallets to entities: Rewards can be tied to a persistent, provable identity layer.

Decentralize the verification of work via cryptographic proofs and market-based attestation. Projects like RabbitHole, Layer3, and Goldfinch use this model to gate rewards for specific, provable actions.

• Verifiable on-chain actions: Tasks are cryptographically proven, not self-reported.
• Curator/builder markets: Experts define and attest to valuable work, creating a meritocratic filter.
• Direct value alignment: Contributors are paid for outputs that directly benefit the protocol (e.g., liquidity provisioning, bug bounties).

The endgame for Sybil resistance: proving you're a unique human without revealing your identity. Worldcoin's Orb, zkPass, and Sismo's ZK Badges pioneer this space using biometrics or selective disclosure.

• Privacy-preserving uniqueness: A ZK proof asserts '1 person, 1 vote' without linking to a wallet or biometric data.
• Global permissionless access: Unlike social graphs, it doesn't exclude the unbanked or privacy-conscious.
• The ultimate cost function: Forging a unique human proof requires breaking cutting-edge cryptography, not just spinning up wallets.

Imposes a high, real-world cost on identity creation via orb-verified iris biometrics. This creates a global, unique human identity layer that is cryptographically bound to wallets.

• Key Benefit: Raises the cost of a sybil attack from near-zero to the physical acquisition of unique human participants.
• Key Benefit: Enables protocols to permission contributions based on proven personhood, not capital.

Sybil resistance as a composable score, aggregating attestations from BrightID, ENS, POAP, and Coinbase Verification. It uses a stamp system to build a decentralized identity graph.

• Key Benefit: Shifts defense from a single point of failure to a multi-faceted reputation graph.
• Key Benefit: Allows protocols to set custom thresholds (e.g., a score of 20) to gate contributions, balancing inclusivity and security.

Provides the primitive for making any claim—from KYC status to contribution badges—into a verifiable, on-chain attestation. It doesn't solve sybil resistance itself but is the infrastructure upon which solutions are built.

• Key Benefit: Decouples attestation creation from verification logic, enabling modular sybil-resistance strategies.
• Key Benefit: Creates a portable, chain-agnostic reputation layer that can be consumed by protocols like Optimism's RetroPGF or Allo for grant distribution.

Incentive distribution without sybil-proofing is just a capital efficiency test for bots. Projects like LayerZero, EigenLayer, and Starknet have seen billions in value allocated to sophisticated farming armies, diluting real users.

• Key Consequence: Signaling becomes noise; you cannot measure genuine adoption or contribution.
• Key Consequence: Real community builders are outgunned by automated scripts, destroying the intended network effect.

The future is not one-size-fits-all. Sybil resistance will be contextual: a DAO may require Proof-of-Participation (e.g., Snapshot votes), while a social app needs Proof-of-Uniqueness.

• Key Benefit: Modular defense allows protocols to tailor cost functions (time, money, social graph) to their specific threat model.
• Key Benefit: Composable attestations from EAS, Ceramic, and Verax enable these custom graphs to be built and shared.

Pure economic staking for sybil resistance (e.g., deposit $1) fails because capital is fungible and borrowable. EigenLayer's intersubjective forking introduces a social layer, but the initial sybil set for slashing is still a critical vulnerability.

• Key Insight: Capital is sybil-resistant but not human-aligned. It must be coupled with persistent identity or high-latency, non-transferable stakes.
• Key Insight: Protocols must design for collusion resistance, not just single-actor sybil attacks.