Morning Edition · Tuesday, June 30, 2026Published at 6:35 AM EDT · New York

Researchers try to put a dollar price on proving you are a real human

A new paper argues proof-of-personhood systems have run for a decade without a way to measure their own resistance to forgery, and proposes pricing it in dollars.

As automated agents multiply on-chain, the problem of distinguishing one real human from thousands of fake accounts, known as Sybil resistance, is becoming a measurable infrastructure layer rather than a slogan. A paper circulated on Ethere…