What is Human Verification?

Anyone can create thousands of wallets, social accounts, and digital personas at near-zero cost. As AI gets more capable, telling humans apart from sophisticated bots gets harder and more important.

Most solutions to this problem rely on biometrics: iris scans, facial recognition, or other physical markers. These approaches require you to hand over intimate personal data to a centralized entity and trust that it will be stored and governed responsibly.

Ethos takes a different approach.
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Instead of asking "can a machine verify this is a human?" Ethos asks "can trusted humans verify this is a human?"

Human Verification uses Ethos's existing network of trusted Validators — real people with significant reputation at stake — to verify that you are, in fact, a real person. No iris scans. No facial recognition. No specialized hardware. No biometric databases.

This is how trust has always worked: through vouching, reputation, and social networks. Ethos brings these mechanisms onchain with the right incentive structures to keep everyone honest.

Once you're Human Verified, you receive:

As AI-generated content and autonomous agents proliferate, the ability to credibly signal that you're a real person becomes increasingly valuable. Platforms can surface content from verified humans, rewards flow to real people instead of bot armies, and governance mechanisms gain meaningful sybil resistance.