Proof of Location
Proof of Location
The problem Proof of Location solves
Demo link
Problem it solves:
Triviality of GPS Spoofing. Traditional Global Positioning System (GPS) signals are generally unencrypted, unauthenticated, and incredibly weak by the time they reach the Earth's surface.
Anyone with a few hundred dollars of commercially available Software-Defined Radio (SDR) equipment can broadcast fake GPS signals. This allows attackers to trick a device into reporting it is inside a secure facility or a specific country when it is actually halfway across the world.
Why it is a real problem:
Users often spoof their location to earn token rewards for providing coverage in areas they aren't actually in (e.g., the early days of the Helium network). A space-backed PoL would provide an un-gameable "proof of physical work," ensuring hardware nodes are exactly where they claim to be.
Who is it useful for?
Any DePIN network that incentivizes users to deploy physical hardware in certain areas of the world.
It might serve as an extra layer of authentication for future Proof of Personhood projects based on Social-graph.
To achieve true decentralization, blockchain networks should incentivize validators to host nodes in geographically underrepresented regions. By implementing Proof of Location, networks can distribute their infrastructure more evenly, resulting in a highly resilient and genuinely decentralized network.
More use-cases outside of Web3 that we have not really thought of.
Challenges we ran into
Demo link
What was hard for us
It is very difficult to verify the exact location without any external exploits - which is what we aimed for!
Our solution still has some requirements and assumptions that the user and network need to fulfill:
- Exceptional internet connection and low latency.
- We trust SpaceComputer hardware
Our solution
we use Time Difference of Arrival to calculate the Location and Satellites from SpaceComputer generate a proof.
Instead of calculating the exact location, we figured that it might be better to calculate the probability of the user to be on the location. Let's say that if we can connect to at least 1 of the satellites really quickly (without any added latency), that would mean we can not be further away than what is possible with the speed of light.
Also, nobody is said that we can not try to connect multiple times. If we get a bad latency reading, the connection attempt could be repeated :D
Tracks Applied (2)
Ethereum Core
SpaceComputer Bounty
SpaceComputer
Technologies used
Cheer Project
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