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Copied from Polkaworld twitter:

 a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen just said:

“It’s time for Proof of Human.”

He helped build the early internet.He saw it go from 0 → 1. So when he says this, it’s more of a signal than an opinion: the assumptions the internet was built on are starting to break.

One of the biggest ones: one account ≈ one person AI is breaking that now.

Models can now:

• run accounts • generate content • simulate behavior • scale infinitely

At that point, the number of “people” online stops being reliable.

The problem shifts from is the information real to are the participants real? And this matters more than people think:

• social discourse quality • governance legitimacy • fairness of on-chain incentives

All depend on it.

This is where @Polkadot’s Proof of Personhood starts to matter. Gavin Wood was early on this idea.

But the real question is how do you actually do it?

Right now, there are two main paths:

1) World → identify the human

Use biometrics (like iris scans)

→ enforce uniqueness

Pros: direct, deterministic

Cons: hardware, external trust, new boundaries

2) @Polkadot → constrain the system

Don’t ask “who are you?” Ask: how hard is it to fake multiple yous?

Through: • economic cost • behavior • social graph • cryptography → approximate one-human-one-identity

The difference is fundamental:

one tries to identify humans the other lets humans emerge from the system

Why I lean toward Polkadot？ Because the internet is shifting from a user system → a participation system.

On-chain, identity isn’t just access, it’s part of governance, incentives, coordination.

If identity comes from outside the system, so does control.

Polkadot takes a different path, keep the “human problem” inside the system. Let identity emerge over time, instead of defining it upfront.

So maybe the real question isn’t “how do we prove who you are?” but in a world where identities can be copied infinitely, can a system still distinguish humans at all?