I tend to get my best ideas while taking a shower or right before going to bed. This idea came up a couple nights ago and I thought it was interesting enough to discuss in more detail. Up to this point, my previous ideas have been rebuffed by the fact that attackers can simply create new accounts to take advantage of the weak "Proof-of-Brain" standard. 

I was initially chasing for a solution to the inequality problem, but the real problem with Steem is that of account legitimacy. There is a built in assumption that any account is a good actor. A bad assumption if you are trying to build a secure system that rewards users for good behavior in the community.

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![check-2160904_640.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRFVqnbCnzpztE9YwCbfrbbLxMk3mvctMgqs7c2bYLVud/check-2160904_640.png)
<h4>The real issue is verifying whether or not the community trusts the account</h4>
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Now account verification is not a new idea. There are self social media sites that showcase their verified users and tie those users with a single identity. But their verification process requires a small pool of employees selected by the company making the whole process inherently centralized. There is also the desire to tie an account with an identity.

However, we don't need to be that strict. Rather than argue for one account, one identity, we argue for whether or not we trust an account as a legitimate contributor to the community and deserving of rewards. We don't care if they have a face to tie to their account unless they claim to be a particular individual. Which may or may not be part of the verification process depending on the individual.

In order to verify identities, we need a small group of individuals, initially, to begin verifying accounts. However, these individuals shouldn't be selected by a single organization but the entire community at large. One might look at the witnesses, but these initial verifiers, should be independent of witnesses. They can still be witnesses, but being a witness shouldn't be a requirement or an expectation. While it might be good to have people that have technical experience, we simply need people that the community "trusts" to make good decisions.

To select these top-level verifiers, all the members of the community simply elect them as they would a witness, with votes expiring after 12 months, with the possibility of renewal after 6 months. This is to prevent the voices of dead accounts from being heard. 

An arbitrary number of these top-level verifiers would be selected, with those selected having the greatest percentage of stake to their names. People would be able to vote for an unlimited number of people (although this might be limited for practical reasons). For me, a reasonable amount of top-level verifiers would be 10. That might seem like a small number, but it really isn't once we go through the verification process.

These top-level verifiers are now verified. They are the only members who are verified within the community at this point. This verification appears to be legitimate as it requires a lot of trust to be selected as one of the Top 10 most trustworthy members of the entire community. But, what about the other members of the community that are still unverified? 

Well, this is easy. They simply need 2 of the top-level verifiers to explicitly trust them. Imagine each account needing a certain minimal amount of trust to verified. The top-level verifier is able to fill 50% of that trust quota. Pretty simple. This explicit vote of trust would also last for 12 months, with the possibility of renewal after 6 months.

But the sheer number of accounts is so large and growing that it would be nearly impossible for these top-level verifiers to verify all of these accounts and continually renew their votes. Thus, we need more verifiers. Thus, we have secondary level verifiers. These people are folks who have at least 2 votes of trust from top-level verifiers. These folks also have the ability to help verify accounts, but because they weren't directly elected, we shouldn't trust them as much. 

Thus, secondary level verifiers are able to fill 25% of the trust quota. Thus, accounts can now be verified by much more than simply one of the 10 top-level verifiers. Now, you can be verified by either the top-level verifiers, the secondary-level verifiers, or a combination of the two. As long as you fill 100% or more of your trust quota, you are a verified and trusted member of the community. 

We can continue to extend these levels of verifiers. An n-ary level verifier would be someone whose trust quota is filled by verifiers who are of the (n-1) level and above. Any n-ary level verifier is able to fill ((1/2)^n)% of the trust quota. Now depending on your implementation you may want to restrict the number of levels that you allow trust to be distributed in such a manner. Anymore than 6-8 levels might be excessive but depends on the size and degree of participation of the respective community. 

Also note that verification is not a permanent status. At any time, one of the verifiers votes could expire, or depending on poor behavior, a verifier may opt to revoke their vote of trust. Depending on the level of the verifier, this could cause a chain reaction of accounts becoming unverified. Thus it is important for all users to stay involved and diverse the sources of their verification.

This encourages good behavior and participation in the network. Those who attempt shady things in the background and don't contribute to the community will never be verified. Certain community members who like to revenge "flag" or reward pool rape may stop their behavior in order to maintain their verified status. Or they may not. Which leads us to the "radical" part of this proposal.

Only verified members will be allowed to earn rewards and cast votes reflective of their weight in Steem Power. Unverified members can still transfer money and purchase/trade Steem and SBD and power up, but they will have zero interaction or influence over the new Steem being mined. This makes the weak "Proof-of-Brain" standard into a stronger standard. Granted such a system requires active participation, but vastly decreases one's ability to simply buy some Steem and start farming with a massive number of accounts.

Now, this idea isn't completely novel. From what I understand, @ned's idea of oracles do sound similar to my top-level verifiers although it is a little unclear what else oracles can and can not do. The part about locking rewards from unverified accounts is novel and why I call this proposal "radical".

Now granted there are a lot of "entitlistas" on this platforms who feel they deserve to make rewards independent of their role in the community. But I must ask why should these people be rewarded? They help no one but themselves. If you do engage in the community, you shouldn't be concerned. If you are concerned, chances are that you are less involved with the community than you think you are. 

Trust needs to be earned and that's what makes this system secure and worthy of the "Proof-of-Brain" moniker. In the current system, you don't really have to prove anything other than having slightly more intelligence than a hamster and access to a computer.

So, I open up the conversation to the floor. I want to hear your ideas, your proposals, your concerns. What I don't want to hear is apathy or computer generated bot spam. I'm still giving away SBD, so I will give up to 10 of the best comments 10% of the SBD. If I only deem 3 comments to be prize worthy, each commenter gets 33%. Make sense? 

Thanks again for taking the time to read this. If you simply skipped to the last paragraph for some reason, I hope that reading this last paragraph was a positive experience for you. To all, have a great day and to those in America, enjoy your sports holiday.   



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[Image](https://pixabay.com/en/check-mark-checked-fix-fixed-icon-2160904/)