Staking Your Body - ForkLog: Cryptocurrencies, AI, Singularity, the Future

# Your Body’s Staking

On Biopolitics in the Web3 Era

The development of artificial intelligence has challenged traditional online verification methods. Text passwords, CAPTCHA, and facial recognition algorithms no longer guarantee user uniqueness. The digital environment requires cryptographic proof of humanity. The Web3 industry is moving to a new level of identification, turning the physical body into a universal access tool. Retina scans, palm vein patterns, heartbeat, and genetic code are becoming the main keys to access the new economy.

ForkLog explored how the philosophical concept of biopolitics is implemented in blockchain networks, why metaverses need users’ biological data, and what risks are hidden in trading one’s own genome.

“Bare Life” in Web3

The concept of biopolitics in its modern form was formulated in the mid-1970s by Michel Foucault. The French philosopher showed that in the era of modern state formation, power begins to focus on managing populations and the economy through medicine, hygiene, and demography. The human body becomes an object of political regulation through disciplinary institutions (schools, hospitals, prisons), statistics, and mechanisms of quality and lifespan control.

Foucault’s observations were later radicalized by Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben. In his book “Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life” (1995), he introduced the term “nuda vita” (bare life). According to Agamben, this is a state where an individual loses political subjectivity and is considered solely as a biological organism.

Web3 can be seen as the foundation for creating a new economic infrastructure, where the monopoly of the state and capital over identity management gives way to decentralized protocols. Here, blockchain networks form their own biopolitics: the physical body ceases to be just a vessel of consciousness, and the organism becomes a data generator.

Current technologies are transforming “bare life” into “digitized life.” A unique nucleotide sequence in DNA or an unrepeatable pattern of the iris becomes the foundation of social capital. In the future, protocols may require users to confirm biological reality in exchange for access to financial services, governance mechanisms, and capital distribution.

Evolution of Biometric Networks: From Iris to DNA

Mass adoption of biometrics in the crypto industry began with projects like World (formerly known as Worldcoin). Its developers created a device called Orb, designed specifically for scanning the iris: by providing a biometric imprint, network participants receive WLD tokens and a digital passport called World ID. The project launch sparked widespread public debate about the ethics of exchanging unique biological markers for financial assets. Nevertheless, the concept of unconditional basic income (UBI), funded through the protocol’s tokenomics, naturally attracted millions of users.

World’s dominance in the Proof-of-Personhood market was short-lived. The launch of new protocols changed the approach to data collection. Hardware limitations gave way to mobile technologies.

The Humanity Protocol project deployed a network on Polygon using palm biometrics (including vein scans) via smartphones or specialized equipment. This technology does not require Orb-level hardware, radically speeding up network scaling.

The TON ecosystem integrated solutions from HumanCode. Telegram users can verify their identity by scanning their palm directly from mini-apps. Developers rely on cryptographic protection of biometric vectors within smartphones using Secure Enclave standards (available on iOS devices).

The sector’s development aims to increase the depth of collected data. Startups are building bases for DNA collection. Projects at the intersection of blockchain and decentralized science (DeSci) are emerging. Platforms like GenomesDAO offer genome sequencing and encryption of results. The owner of the genome can sell temporary access to their genetic markers to pharmaceutical companies without revealing a direct link to their identity.

All these trends are forming a unified economic model of total biometric coverage. It is quite likely that future UBI systems in metaverses will require users to provide a comprehensive biological profile. While basic payouts might be achievable with simple face scans, medium levels will already require integration with wearable electronics for continuous data transmission about pulse and sleep phases. The maximum passive income level will only be accessible to fully verified donors of genetic code.

The “Oracular Flesh” Problem

Blockchain is an isolated system. Smart contracts cannot independently access external information. This task is handled by oracles— gateways that supply data on asset prices or match results. This is where the bridge between the physical and digital worlds—the so-called “flesh oracle”—arises.

Transmitting raw biological data to corporate servers or open blockchains carries critical risks. A compromised password can be changed, but a stolen iris pattern or decrypted genome cannot. It is important to understand that biometrics can only protect access to a key, not be the key itself, since a private key is strictly a cryptographic object. However, compromising biological data used to access this object leads to the irreversible loss of digital identity.

Solutions to privacy issues include zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). ZKP allows confirming a fact without revealing accompanying information. However, it should be clarified that zero-knowledge proofs do not solve the problem of “body reality” per se. They only verify the correctness of a computation, not the “liveness” of the subject. Human recognition remains an exclusively hardware-level task—sensors and specialized scanners.

The next-generation verification process works in tandem: hardware confirms the presence of a unique living person, then the device mathematically proves to the protocol the correct data collection. The blockchain receives only a cryptographic certificate (ZK proof). Raw iris or DNA data remains on the user’s local device or is destroyed immediately after hash generation.

FHE takes security to the next level. Homomorphic encryption allows external algorithms and neural networks to analyze genetic sequences or medical indicators while the data remains encrypted. The protocol verifies genome compatibility with medical research without knowing the original nucleotide sequence.

Thus, a combination of reliable hardware and cryptography forms a complete “flesh oracle” that confirms the body’s reality, forever keeping it in cryptographic shadow.

The Biometric Derivatives Market

Tokenizing biological parameters opens the way for new financial instruments. Genetic data already hold high commercial value for research institutes, biotech companies, and insurance funds, but today their circulation mostly occurs outside Web3. Transferring this data to blockchain remains a conceptual model. Despite the lack of a mass market in this sphere, the development of niche initiatives at the intersection of blockchain and genomics could, in the future, form an initial digital market for genetic capital.

In this futurist concept, users could directly monetize their physical traits. For example, someone with a rare genetic mutation (such as innate immunity to certain viruses) might provide access to their data to research labs. Web3 advocates believe that blockchain can automate regular payments via smart contracts, but implementing such ideas faces serious obstacles. Linking a specific medical discovery to an individual genome legally and methodologically is extremely challenging, so currently pharmaceutical companies do not use royalties for each data access, limiting themselves to one-time compensations or participation payments in clinical trials.

Nevertheless, the hypothetical development of a secondary market could lead to the creation of biometric derivatives. Research pools might issue tokens whose yields are backed by future medical discoveries based on collected genetic material from specific user groups. In the long run, this could lead to futures on access to DNA of certain demographic groups.

There is a possibility that, in the future, the economy of metaverses will partially rely on verified biological diversity. According to one development scenario, liquidity will shift from traditional assets to data about human physiology, and biometric staking will become a new form of passive income. In this paradigm, freezing ZK-certificates of one’s DNA in a smart contract could potentially generate income from research requests by corporations.

Ethical Crisis of Genome Tokenization

Trading biometric data destroys traditional notions of privacy. The greatest ethical concern is the monetization of DNA.

Genetic information is not strictly individual. DNA contains precise data about biological parents, siblings, and children. Uploading one’s genome to a decentralized marketplace automatically compromises the medical privacy of the entire family. Selling one’s genetic profile for UBI opens access to information about predispositions to genetic diseases of dozens of relatives.

The collective nature of DNA directly conflicts with the individualism of the crypto economy. Smart contracts lack mechanisms to obtain consent from all carriers of similar genetic markers.

There is a risk of creating genetic inequality. Algorithms of metaverses and decentralized insurance protocols could discriminate against users based on encrypted on-chain data. Approving a loan in a DeFi protocol or setting a medical insurance rate might depend on the likelihood of disease development embedded in the tokenized genome.

Exchanging biometrics for a basic income creates economic coercion. Users voluntarily give protocol keys to their physical existence not only due to financial necessity but also under the temptation of quick monetization, social influence, or simple ignorance of long-term risks. The technology designed to protect against corporate dictatorship forms a new dependency: participation in the digital economy is bought at the cost of complete de-anonymization of the body.

Integrating biopolitics into Web3 architecture will complete the merging of the physical and digital worlds. The body ceases to be an external object relative to the network. Blockchain transforms physiology into liquidity, and human life into a set of cryptographic proofs. Using DNA as a biometric identifier could complicate attacks by Civilla, but it does not fully solve the problem, as critical vulnerabilities remain—such as pattern compromise and data cloning. The main oversight is another: this approach poses a sharp threat to the fundamental human right not to be indexed by algorithms.