Rulebook tech 101: Introduction to the future of digital trust online
This article provides a high-level overview of Exonym's Rulebook technology and the system's mechanics to establish trust and accountability, even in anonymous environments.
Authors
Mike Harris
Bryce Willem
Internet Governance, Anonymity x Accountability, System Design
6 min read
June 12, 2023
This overview clarifies the principal features and mechanics of Exonym's primary technology, Decentralized Rulebooks, with the semi-technical reader in mind.
At their core, Rulebooks empower users to demonstrate their ongoing compliance with specified standards. The system is meticulously designed to ensure user accessibility, privacy, and rule adherence in digital spaces, thereby cultivating environments of trust, cooperation, and transparency.
Central to the system are two integral components: exonym matrices and Rulebooks. In unison, they provide a robust framework for privacy preservation and rule enforcement.
Rulebook introduction
Rulebooks are open-ended documents that can be used to represent and encode context-specific standards or regulations online. Anyone can make a Rulebook, but to enact governance of those rules, one must become a Lead or an Moderator to establish a node.
Individual users affiliate with different Moderators, entities that voluntarily take on the responsibility of overseeing specific Rulebooks and offer their services to the network, enabling users to subscribe if they find the offered rules beneficial. Upon joining an Moderator, users obtain portable credentials. These credentials are uniquely linked to pseudonymous identifiers under each rule of the Rulebook, providing versatility to operate within the system without any further interaction with the Moderator.
This feature provides users the latitude to maneuver through varied digital environments, utilizing their credentials to demonstrate their compliance with the rules established by their chosen Moderators. The scheme ultimately establishes a system of anonymous yet accountable transactions. In effect, users' actions are trackable through their unique pseudonymous identifier under each rule, yet their anonymity is safeguarded and un-linkable.
Through this system, we aspire to build a more secure, accountable digital world, where privacy is upheld and honesty remains the preferred policy.
The system manages to escape the zero-sum dilemma of privacy VS accountability, striking an unprecedented balance between anonymization and effective rule enforcement.
System overview
Exonym uses unique, pseudonymous identifiers to track users' rule adherence while maintaining privacy. These identifiers, revealed at users' discretion, facilitate rule enforcement. Every system node publishes 'exonyms' for the rules they control, with private mappings held by Moderators.
The Sybil service uses biometric security (facial recognition and fingerprinting) for robust identity verification. This service prevents account duplication, manages bot revocations, and enables user accountability for Rulebooks where they are applied.
Users can subscribe to multiple Moderators, subject to rule compatibility, and migrate between Moderators as rules vary or contexts evolve. Revocation of credentials happens via private mappings, rendering 'Proof of Honesty' tokens invalid.
The 'Proof of Honesty' token provides anonymous revocation, balancing rule enforcement and user anonymity. Encrypted within the token, a revocation handle enables rule enforcement without identity exposure.
Accountability is key, with penalties for non-adherence to Rulebooks. The scheme's flexible structure manages user access, privacy, and rule enforcement while ensuring rule adherence and applying penalties as needed.
Exonym matrices
An exonym is a unique, pseudonymous identifier for users, tracking their rule adherence and revocation status while preserving privacy. Users must choose to reveal their exonym, allowing Moderators to enforce rules and revoke privileges without exposing identities. The system manages to escape the zero-sum dilemma of privacy VS accountability, striking an unprecedented balance between anonymization and effective rule enforcement.
Each node in the system maintains two public exonym matrices for controlled and uncontrolled rules, respectively. When Alice joins an Moderator, her undiscovered exonyms are published to the controlled matrix and discovered exonyms to the uncontrolled matrix. Moderators store a private mapping between the zeroth exonym and a user's revocation handle, allowing them to discover the handle when needed.
Alice can choose between joining an Moderator or losing privileges. If she opts for privilege loss, her actions remain indeterminate to any web user, including Moderators, Leads, and Sybil, thus preserving her privacy. To regain privileges, Alice must reveal her exonyms, which would identify the rule she was revoked for.
Sybil resistance mechanism
The Sybil service, integral to the Exonym scheme, safeguards system integrity by mitigating identity duplication.
This centralized system leverages facial recognition in a remote onboarding process, ensuring identity uniqueness. For heightened assurance, an in-person onboarding pathway is planned, employing selected fingerprints.
The Sybil service prevents duplicate accounts, invalidates containers upon user request, and manages bot revocations. It reinforces accountability for user actions, bridging anonymity with rule enforcement.
Multi-Moderator Subscriptions
Rulebooks need to be reusable and practical, allowing for upgrades and downgrades in user privileges. Users can subscribe to an Moderator with lower standards than their current one if needed. However, if two Moderators control the same rules, a user cannot join both.
Ultimately, Decentralized Rulebooks give us the tools to adapt our digital world to informationally reflect our shared values and generate better collective outcomes.
Moderator Migration and Revocation
Users can move from one Moderator to another where there is a difference in the rules at the origin and destination. Revoking a user's credential(s) means that a token claiming honesty cannot be interpreted as being currently honest under that Rulebook. Moderators execute revocation by looking up the revocation handle via the private mapping they saved when the user joined their node.
Anonymous Revocation
Exonym balances user anonymity and rule enforcement using the 'Proof of Honesty' token. This unique and anonymized digital signature, which can be presented interactively or written as a static file for inspection, allows third parties to verify a user's adherence to a specific Rulebook.
Embedded within each token is a revocation handle, securely encrypted and verifiable, and visible only to the Moderator. This handle empowers them to enforce accountability. If a user, like Alice, transgresses the set rules, the Moderator can use the handle to revoke her privileges. Importantly, the revocation handle does not reveal Alice's identity, preserving her anonymity even during rule enforcement.
In practice, this enables Alice to evidence her rule compliance to Bob without exposing her identity. If Alice infringes a rule, her privileges can be swiftly revoked by the Moderator via her revocation handle, all while maintaining her anonymity. This unique capability, when combined with Sybil's clone resistance and the approach to communicating Rulebook infringement, finalizes the informatics of this novel and robust governance framework.
Accountability
Rulebooks rely on accountability, imposing penalties on producers who fail to adhere to the rules. These penalties include financial penalties, time penalties, ownership of a credential, and total exclusion from a specific Lead. Total exclusion requires the availability of alternative Leads and the presence of at least one Lead that has not activated the permanent exclusion penalty.
The scheme provides a secure and adaptable framework for managing user access, privacy, and rule enforcement in online environments. Its structure allows for flexibility in joining and leaving Moderators, while ensuring that rule adherence is maintained, and penalties are applied when necessary.
Conclusion
Decentralized Rulebooks represent a transformative step forward in online governance, addressing the long-standing conundrum of privacy and accountability. Coupled with the system's web-scale portability, Rulebook can open the way for whole new models of distributed, democratic governance – even enabling the first framework able to separate transactional utility from transactional governance.
These capabilities have far-reaching potential to augment our current, outdated models of governance and address today's torrential information space. Ultimately, Decentralized Rulebooks give us the tools to adapt our digital world to informationally reflect our shared values and generate better collective outcomes.
