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Sybil-Resistant Asset Distribution

Interstellar’s airdrop and onboarding engine is designed to be resilient against Sybil attacks, using a decentralized combination of secure hardware attestation, dynamic visual cryptography, and on-chain enforcement to validate the presence of a real human on a real device—without relying on traditional KYC, CAPTCHAs, or centralized account reputation systems.

Threat Model​

A typical Sybil attack in crypto airdrops involves:

  • Spawning thousands of automated wallet instances across virtual machines or emulated environments.
  • Claiming rewards through scripted interactions.
  • Cycling wallets via hard resets or uninstall/reinstall loops to bypass device-based detection.

Traditional Web2 and Web3 protections such as IP rate limiting, CAPTCHAs, or wallet age checks are increasingly ineffective, especially when up against coordinated, scalable mobile farms.

Interstellar's Approach​

Interstellar neutralizes Sybil strategies through a layered defense:

  • Device binding: Each wallet is cryptographically linked to a mobile device via a non-exportable key generated in the Secure Element (SE).
  • One-to-one biometric unlock: Every operation requires biometric unlock tied to the SE, ensuring the same user is interacting.
  • Visual Cryptography Authentication (VCA): Each asset claim requires human-visible interaction with a one-time visual challenge rendered at 60–120 fps. These shares are generated via on-chain garbled circuits, unique per session.
  • Claim verification on-chain: The blockchain verifies the SE attestation and garbled circuit proof, ensuring the claim was human, local, and legitimate.

Economic Defense Layer​

Beyond detection, Interstellar increases the attack cost:

  • For a Sybil attacker to succeed, they must control large numbers of physical smartphones with unlocked biometrics.
  • Visual cryptographic proof requires real-time human interaction—difficult to spoof, automate, or batch.
  • Each bypass attempt may require a 0-day exploit in SE or biometric middleware, which becomes economically unjustifiable when attackers can target less secure ecosystems instead.

Trustless Fairness​

This system enables:

  • Bot-resistant airdrops with deterministic rules
  • Fair onboarding for campaigns and growth funnels
  • No vendor lock-in or reliance on centralized identity platforms

It’s Sybil resistance without surveillance.

Summary​

Interstellar’s asset distribution model prevents Sybil attacks by combining device-level security primitives, human-visible cryptography, and on-chain verification—all executed without centralized dependencies. This shifts the cost curve permanently in favor of defenders, making airdrops and onboarding campaigns provably fair and economically secure at scale.