[Compendium] Ideas to build with Semaphore

[aguzmant103]

Explore a list of ideas and cool projects to build with Semaphore. Even if some iterations of these ideas have already been built, you can take inspiration from them to build something new.
If any of these ideas are interesting to you, comment on the discussion and we can expand on a possible implementation with you!

• Account Abstraction - ERC-4337 Compliant Wallet (Semaphore Wallet)
• Account Abstraction - Account Recovery with Semaphore
• Account Abstraction - Anon Multisig with Semaphore
• Farcaster frames.
• Web2/Web3 - Semaphore signals through SMSs, WhatsApp or Telegram
• Protocol - Private “Secret Leader Election” protocol for validators
• MPC - Simple Semaphore 3PC
• DID - W3C Compliant Semaphore - Government Identities (e.g. TW-DID)
• Anonymity Sets - combine Coinbase authentication and Semaphore ID pool. (idea thread)
• DeFi - Anonymous DEX (AX)
• Governance - Anonymous voting
• Governance - Anonymous feedback
• Communication - Anonymous Social Media (ZK3 on Lens)
• Communications - Anonymous Chats (Discreetly)
• Education - Private credentials and certificates (Block Qualified)
• Government
  • Privately prove income or residence to access government benefits and services
  • Privately prove the number of countries one can visit with a certain passport
• Semaphore signals through SMSs, WhatsApp or Telegram
  • Rough idea: phone number is like the “private signature” and create a deterministic identity commitment in Semaphore. Add them to a group through a link. And then through these two points be able to send anonymous messages, votes, reports/claims.
  • This could be through WhatsApp or SMS which would also not require for people to be online or have a very advanced smart phone.
  • Can we make it so it is free for people to send signals? Have someone else cover the transaction cost?
  • Additional comments:
    • If SMS & WhatsApp is the interface, we’ll likely need a relayer?
    • This relayer would be a single-point of failure and we can be censored
    • We won’t be evil by seeing the message # but we could (maybe they can run their own relayer?)
    • If we want to be not evil, then the signal and zk-proof would have to happen locally
    • This means creating an app (then we could use zk-chat instead?)
    • The app could / could not do a phone # verification (maybe once for sign up?)