The Ledger

Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.

clear all ✕

why aren't all 18 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blania: Artificial intelligence systems will eventually acquire personhood status
“At some point AIs will have personhood too.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 29:26 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blania: AI will perform all digital actions, breaking Web of Trust models
“We disregarded it basically immediately because we assumed that, you know, eventually everything that is just digital and AI will be able to do as well. Yeah, exactly. So an AI will be able to have a GitHub account and we'll be able to post Test and owner acco…”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 5:01 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Assertion Supported
Blania: World splits iris data across servers to avoid central databases
“And how we approach that is we have multi-party computation. And so that essentially means that, so in our case, when you verify with an orb. You know, we take all these pictures they get computed on the device, and then they actually get split up in multiple …”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 13:11 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blania: Photorealistic real-time deepfakes will be commoditized by 2027
“And so I think, you know, in a year from now, it's just going to be a full commodity and it's going to be super photorealistic and absolutely real time.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 18:11 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blania: Verified human identity networks will exhibit powerful network effects
“In a world of AI, having a human network is going to be this incredibly important thing. And so actually, yeah, two things like one, you will need a proof of human, but then second, it will have very strong network effects.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 28:29 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Prediction Held up
Blania: Social platforms will fail attempting phone face biometrics for human verification
“My guess is over the next couple months, we will see things like these platforms trying to use things like face biometrics on the phone, which, you know, I know it will break, so it's fine, but I think we'll go through that cycle now.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 32:15 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blania: Current AI activity is under 1% of what is coming
“What we currently see is less than one percent of what it will look like in probably a year or two.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 22:21 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Blania: Older Android phones cannot be trusted for biometric re-authentication
“With a new iPhone, you can have meaningful amount of trust against that, but with old Android phones basically not. And so yeah, you know, because like you can just you can just show a deep fake essentially either through a display or just directly injected in…”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 10:01 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Assertion Supported
Blania: World ID enables anonymous identity verification via zero-knowledge proofs
“And then the second thing we do is we separate all of this from you with a zero knowledge proof. So meaning you have that secret on your phone. But no one else has it. No server has it. We don't have it. And then you can later go back to this multi-party compu…”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 14:33 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Assertion Supported
Blania: World ID is testing human-verification badges on Tinder in Japan
“So, so we started in Japan and like as a test market, and it's essentially exactly what we just discussed. It is if you verified with an orb, you get a little batch that You know, signals to other people that you are in fact a human.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 16:33 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blania: World will direct 90% of company effort to the US
“So I think over the next year, 90% of the, you know, effort of the company is just gonna go about the US.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 25:38 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Insight
Blania: Online interactions will split into humans, proxy agents, and autonomous agents
“I actually think the kinds of questions that we're now asking is, are you interacting with a human an agent on behalf of a human or just an agent? Like, I think these are like roughly the three areas that we want to split apart.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 1:01 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Assertion Partly supported
Blania: Face and fingerprint biometrics hit scale limits at tens of millions
“Things like a face or, you know, even fingerprints or something doesn't work. Like that, then you would basically hit a wall after tens of millions of users.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 8:03 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Assertion Supported
Blania: Iris biometrics contain enough entropy for global uniqueness checks
“And so then you end up with you know, something like iris, which is the muscle of your eye that actually has enough entropy.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 8:15 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Assertion Supported
Blania: World Orb sends a signed face image to users for re-authentication
“When you verify with an orb, we not only do we check your uniqueness in a fully anonymous and privacy-preserving way, and we should talk about that, but also we send to your phone a signed face image that you then can later use to re-authenticate against it.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 9:40 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blania: Users with older phones must visit an Orb multiple times yearly
“If you have a new enough, let's say iPhone or a general phone then you can just reauthenticate against that picture that you took on verification. Otherwise you would probably have to even go back to an orb somewhat frequently. Like let's say a couple of times…”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 10:19 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blania: Iris biometrics will normalize across consumer devices with AR/VR adoption
“So actually, I think one point on Iris that I think people don't appreciate enough, and that's a bet we took back then, but it was essentially that Iris will turn out to be super normal as a modality, just because I think we will all wear AR and VR systems tha…”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 11:16 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
Assertion Partly supported
Blania: World has reached 18 million verified users and 40 million total
“We are now at. Eighteen million users that are verified. Forty million in total in the app.”
Alex Blania Apr 2, 2026 ▶ 25:01 How Bots, Deepfakes and AI Agents Are Forcing a New Internet Identity Layer | Alex Blania on a16z
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