AntSyb Litepaper
AntSyb is a project designed to fight Sybil through the use of different approaches to discern suspicious patterns of behavior on the breadth of on and off-chain data. The goal is to protect web3 by focusing on Sybil detection and resistance through the research, design and development of useful algorithms and other approaches to resist re-centralization and potential capture at the data layer.
The Sybil Problem
We are going to assume that the reader is familiar with Sybil, and if not, this should help to get you started. The general idea is that a single node (i.e. computer, operator, or person) creates multiple active fake identities in order to pose as multiple users within a peer-to-peer network, undermine the authority or power of the network, and gain the majority of influence in the network to its own advantage.
This may be somewhat trivial within other internet networks, but with the perpetual crypto-economic incentives in web3, it becomes not as trivial. Sybil attacks can reorder and rewrite transactions for money, gain disproportionate voting power, block honest network participants and compromise user privacy, amongst many others.
There are many examples where Sybil attacks have subverted networks, the most recent being the airdrop for the Ethereum scaling protocol Arbitrum(ARB), where users and entities controlling multiple addresses received almost 48% of all tokens distributed.
How it is currently solved
A lot has been invested by protocols and grants to try and solve the Sybil problem, with the most investments going towards on-chain address-relations type solutions, that mainly use addresses to fish out Sybil attackers. These solutions haven’t made much difference and this shouldn’t come across as a surprise, because duly motivated Sybil attackers usually cut off the connection between their addresses.
A much better solution
The biggest difference between a real account and a Sybil account is that Sybil attackers don’t spend enough time on each of their addresses, and as we know, it is easy for Sybil attackers to isolate addresses. Hence, it is hard to find out Sybil addresses via address relation only, without using some sort of off-chain social identity and reputation scoring system.
This then leads to possible anti-Sybil design approaches (on-chain and off-chain) that can be combined together to make a formidable algorithm, an API to fight sybils :
- On-chain data: This uses on-chain activity and history to determine whether a user engaged in certain web3 activities in a specified timeframe. This includes indicators such as address lifetime, average transaction value and token availability, activity degree (i.e. interaction diversity and density), flagged activity on Etherscan, interaction with money-mixers, and also activities with related and cluster addresses.
- Off-chain data: This uses off-chain activity and history to determine whether a user has a human and social identity. This includes data from the browser, IP, social account, event trace, and fingerprint.
The API allows a user to connect their wallet and social account, an analysis of the wallet’s history, social identity and reputation is then conducted and a trust score is calculated. The data inputted is analyzed through specialized algorithms to give a Sybil likelihood, which is then used to come to a decision about the trustability of the wallet (i.e. user).
This is all geared towards building an identity (social and reputation) system, that simply says, this is a single human being with a real account address.
Implementing it
To increase the efficiency of identifying Sybil behavior, predetermined information is needed to prevent the mislabeling of account addresses (i.e. users) as Sybil. Some might be relatively complex analyses of on-chain data, like detecting when a user has rapidly swapped funds back and forth in order to seem more active. Sequences of rapid transactions between wallets, especially when they ultimately returned to where they started or at least stayed within a small group of addresses, could be a Sybil behavior. Offchain indicators might be controlling multiple relays from a single IP address.
Any of these analyses that are shown to be indicative of Sybil behavior and implementable as an algorithm is turned into an API. This can be bundled into a single package that can be easily imported into a user’s project. A good minimal example would be a Python package that could be installed using a package manager, such as
pip install antsyb
from antsyb import sybil
user_dna = sybil.user_dna(data)
grant_dna = sybil.grant_dna(data)
trust_score = sybil.trust_score(data)
result = sybil.aggregator(user_dna, grant_dna, trust_score)
No Code
A public frontend where users can upload their data (e.g. list of usernames, social accounts, Ethereum addresses) and download their results on a web page would be the obvious route to a no-code implementation. A webpage could enable a user to simply opt-in to the algorithm they wish to apply just by clicking tickboxes. The app then uploads users’ data to a virtual machine, executes the selected algorithms, aggregates the results and returns Sybil scores back to the browser. It is also easy to imagine additional features being made available via a marketplace of option anti-Sybil add-ons to cater to non-generic, niche use cases. The transition from code to no-code implementation is potentially a major unlock in terms of the number and diversity of people that can configure their own Sybil defenses.
Impact of solution
Defending against Sybil attacks helps to realign capital allocation and distribution of real human votes. If we collectively do not resist Sybil attacks then one of the real bright spots of web3 — the collective funding of public goods — could be captured by essentially criminal forces. Similarly, if we continue to take all the shortcuts when accessing and analyzing blockchain data then we are adding vulnerability to the ecosystem right about the decentralized blockchains in the form of centralization.
What next?
This is a project that has the potential to impact us all, positively influence the way we coordinate and how our voices are heard. As such, with the release of this Litepaper, we are formally announcing our intent to build AntSyb in public (BIP).
We want to include everyone in the conversation, and we encourage all members of the web3 community to reach out and contribute to the design and commercialization of AntSyb.
Our immediate next step is to bring all of this IP to market in the form of a delightful consumer product. This could potentially be used to bring disruption and lay the foundation for a new and more transparent web. Eventually, we hope to publish and share the full extent of the IP to support other entrepreneurs pursuing use cases far and wide. If that’s you, please also feel free to reach out! We would be more than happy to chat philosophically on the subject in the interim.
DM me on twitter @owanikin
